Self Medication
by AdmHawthorne
Summary: Jane is having problems dealing with her life. Maura stands by her side as they find a way to help Jane help herself. This is a darker fic than our norm. Cowritten with Googlemouth
1. Chapter 1

**Cowritten with Googlemouth**

**Please note that this is a darker fic than our norm, but do have faith that we make things better with time. **

**We don't own the characters. They belong to Tess, Janet, and other assorted important people at TNT.**

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><p>It had been a long day. It was always a long day – one long day that ran into another long day that ran into a long week, a longer month, and the longest year of her life so far. Everything just <em>after<em> they found the body of the girl. Sometimes, she dreamed of the part she played in her parents' divorce. Sometimes, she dreamed of yelling at Frankie to shoot Lola, but Lola shooting Frankie instead.

Her subconscious mind would not let go of all the things that could have and did go so very wrong in her life no matter how much she begged and pleaded with it to stop reminding her of how much of a screw-up she could be.

If those all too familiar nightmares didn't come to her, two new ones had snuck into the routine. She would dream of Leahy, the detective turned serial killer, holding Maura at gunpoint, and neither woman could react fast enough. She just couldn't move fast enough, and Maura was too scared to do anything but stand there and look terrified. He would pull the trigger, and she would watch in horror as the person she called her best friend vanished in a spray of blood and gore. Other times, Marino had Maura, and Jane watched as if from a great distance as he emptied his clip into the medical examiner just to cause a distraction while he escaped. Try as she might, no matter how hard she fought, there was never anything the detective could do.

Maura always died.

Jane always failed to save her.

She tried the counseling the city offered to their civil servants. She tried writing in a journal about it. In fact, she had continued writing in a journal about it, but it was less cathartic than she thought it would be. The journal had turned into a chronicle of the gore filled and distressing details of each time Maura was killed in front of her while she could do nothing but stand by and watch. She kept it in the drawer of her nightstand, the silver lock the only reassurance that her mother wouldn't bother to read it. Though, lately, she had stopped really caring if Angela did read it. It didn't matter anymore.

Over and over again… night after night… guilt, anger, frustration, sadness, mourning, humiliation, futility, emptiness…

She just couldn't take it. She needed a distraction, just a little something to help her sleep without dreaming. A few months ago, she picked up a bottle of whiskey on her way home from work after a particularly long Wednesday, and she downed a couple of shots before bed. It had worked. She'd slept without a single dream creeping into her unconscious mind. It had worked so well that she kept doing it, every night.

She pulled the bottle of whiskey from the cabinet where she had five identical ones stashed behind some canned goods and looked at the level. It was Thursday, and this was her second bottle for the week.

"Takes a little bit more every day," she mumbled as she popped the top and took a long drink.

At some point, she had started taking a quick shot before she went into work each morning. She'd lost track of when that habit started. She remembered when she started taking a flask with her so she could take a shot to steady her during the working day. It stayed in the car most of the time, though it seemed to find its way up to the apartment more often these days for refills. Daily, it seemed.

But she didn't dream of Maura dying anymore. She didn't have to stand idly by and do nothing. She didn't have to deal with her mind going over all the could-haves, should-haves, and would-haves of all the things she'd screwed up that caused all the hurt to her loved ones.

She just had to make it through the day until she could come home and make the world disappear for just a little while.

There were rules, though. She was adamant about her rules.

1. Never let anyone see you take a shot from the flask.

2. Never get drunk while working a case.

3. Never drink whiskey around anyone, ever. Only drink beer or wine.

4. Never let anyone see you wasted.

5. Never go to work intoxicated. Never get intoxicated while at work.

6. Always have food in the house because Ma would wonder otherwise.

7. Never let anyone know exactly how much whiskey you go through in a week. Hide the bottles.

8. Always be clean and put together.

9. Always carry Listerine with you.

10. Never get caught.

She shook her head and finished the bottle. With an unsteady gait, she moved to the trash can and buried it under old takeout boxes and newspapers. "Functioning," she slurred to herself as she stumbled to her door, checked to make certain the inside lock was bolted, and then stumbled to her bedroom.

The last thing her mind registered before everything went black was someone knocking on her door. "Too late," she grumbled into the pillow, her last words for the night.


	2. Chapter 2

The knock came again, then the doorbell. A key ring jingled; the lock clicked; the door slid open until the deadbolt snapped, alerting the intruder to the fact that the door would not budge any further than the few inches it had already opened – not even enough space to let Joe Friday out. "Jane?" called a soft voice, already laced with worry. "Jane, I know you're there. This latch can't be fastened from outside. Let me in."

Silence met her request, however, just as it had the night before, and the night before that. Just as on those other nights, the honey-brunette had remained outside her best friend's apartment, disturbing the peace until a neighbor came outside to inform her that twenty minutes of pleading should probably be the limit on how long anyone should have to listen to a someone talking to a closed door.

Just as on those other nights, hazel eyes filled with tears as her voice weakened from attempted cheerfulness to overt concern, scolding to sniffling.

Just as on those other nights, and for too many others before them, the visitor checked the windows in the front, then circled around the back of the building to see if Jane had forgotten to secure the back door.

Just as on those other nights, tired and trembling fingers fumbled for her cellphone, scrolling down the list of their mutual friends as she contemplated which one to rouse from sleep, whom to force into worrying with her. Just as on those other nights, she selected a name, then shut off the phone with a sigh, knowing she would not call, would not entrust to any of them the embarrassment she knew her best friend would feel at having her new hobby exposed before a coworker or a family member. Jane would lose respect from Barry or Vince, and she would lose so much more from the family members that had already dealt with the many woes that Tommy Rizzoli had brought onto them in years and months past.

And just as on those other nights, Maura went back to sit in her car until her lachrymal glands stopped overproducing long enough to let her drive home, disappointed and worried. She showered, dressed for bed, poured herself a glass of her cheapest and least-favorite wine, took one sip, and stared at the remainder until she grew disgusted, poured it out, and went to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

The alarm clock broke through the haze to rattle around in Jane's all too fuzzy mind. "Fuck." She slammed her hand down to silence it and sat up very slowly.

Per her normal morning routine, she tumbled from the clump of covers on her bed, weaved her way to the bathroom, downed two aspirin, brushed her teeth, walked the dog, and took a shower. Per her normal morning routine, she laid out her clothes for the day, inspecting to make certain the button down was crisp and the boots were shined. She styled her hair, applied a light amount of makeup, sprayed herself with the body spray she knew Maura liked, and fed and watered Jo. Per her normal morning routine, she walked into the kitchen to feed and water herself but never made it to the fridge.

With a shaking hand, she pulled an unopened whiskey bottle from the back of the cabinet, opened it, and stared at the amber liquid. Her dull brown eyes focused on the bottle as she turned it over in her hand.

"Jo, you know I really should eat something." The little dog whined in response, sitting and watching her owner stare at the familiar bottle. "I really should… I should do a lot of things." She looked down to the small animal. "You know?" She laughed at herself. "Like you can understand what I'm saying." She turned back to the bottle in her hand, her grip tightening even as her hands began to shake more.

With a sigh, she took a sip and then another. After the fourth, her hands steadied and she realized she was breathing easier. She closed the bottle, placed it back in her hiding spot, and brushed her teeth again. As she gargled with the harsh mouthwash, she looked at herself in the mirror.

She looked fine. She looked more than fine. She was better put together now than before. Her eyes were the only thing that seemed different, but it was something she could live with. Nothing mattered. The end of the workday would be here soon enough, and then she could forget about everything for a while and she wouldn't have to look at herself, at her reflection. She wouldn't have to think about what it was that might be going on, wouldn't have to face her issues. She growled at herself, and, taking the dry erase marker she normally used to write reminders on the mirror, she scrawled across her own reflection one word before tossing the marker back down and heading out of the bathroom.

"Hold down the fort, girl, and no wild parties without me," she called over her shoulder as she headed out, closing the door soundly shut behind her.

Jo whined from her place in the corner of the living room. The bathroom mirror reflected the wall across from it, mocking the white wash with a single reminder – FAILURE.


	4. Chapter 4

"Rizzoli, you look good. You got a hot date or something tonight?" Frost gave his partner a sideways smile as he passed her on the way to the coffee pot.

"Man, shut up Frost. You're just jealous because you know I make this look good." With a classic smirk on her face, Jane motioned down the front of her tailored suit. She waggled her eyebrows and laughed as she sat down and turned her computer on.

"Yeah, whatever. You got the results of the Bowen case? Dr. Isles called up earlier and said they were done." He handed over a cup to his partner before sitting down at his desk.

"No, I just got here," she took a sip and made a face. "How long has this been here? A couple of months?" She dropped it in the trash. "God, that's nasty. It tastes like it should be used to grease a car engine or something. I'm going out for coffee. I'll run downstairs on my way back."

"Right, tell Dr. Isles good morning for me." Frost gave her a knowing grin.

"No. Stop it right now, Frost. We've already been over this. Don't make me super glue you to something." Jane pulled on her jacket and checked to make certain it was still wrinkle free.

"Yeah, yeah… bring me back a cup of coffee, okay?"

"Sure."

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><p>"Maura?" Jane swaggered into the morgue, three cups of coffee in a carrier in her hand. "Man, she's never where I think she should be." She ran her free hand over her face, exhaling and inhaling quickly. Grimacing, she quickly pulled her cup of coffee out of the holder and took a long drink. "Maura, come on, I brought you a present!"<p>

"In here," Maura called, her voice sounding a bit dull, a bit… stretched, the words distorted. When Jane entered the eclectically decorated office, she saw why: Maura's face was distorted.

Her head was tilted far back, her mouth slightly open, upper lip drawn down over her teeth in order to widen her eyes even further than she could get them on her own. One hand held an eye open, as Maura squeezed the bottle above it with her other hand; the little lip thing wasn't doing the job for her to be able to get the eye drop into her eye before her eye snapped shut.

Busy as she was with the act of not looking at anything, it left time for observation, which Jane hadn't bothered to do in quite some time. The dusky mauve dress worn beneath Maura's lab coat was lovely, as usual, though the cut was not quite as flattering as what she usually wore. It didn't quite take full advantage of her curves, and, if she was honest, the color wasn't quite perfect for Maura. Despite the unquestionably high quality, it almost looked off the rack. An expensive rack, sure, but a rack nonetheless, and without the additional tailoring Maura regularly had done in order to achieve the custom fit she preferred. Her beige pumps had a slightly lower heel; they were slightly chunkier than her usual.

There was something odd about her hair as well. It was just as shiny and smooth as usual, but not quite as bouncy, and it almost looked as though, perhaps, she might need a quick touch-up to her cut and color, and the peach-toned nail polish did not go with the pale pink-purple of the dress at all.

In between doctoring one eye and the next, she asked in a more normal voice, "What did you bring me?" Drip, drip. "Is it too big to fit in your locker at the gym? Could you have brought it to yoga this morning?" It was a dig. Jane hadn't made it to yoga in quite some time.

"Funny, but I already told you I wasn't going back there after the Jorge thing." Jane stepped closer and set the drinks down. "I brought your favorite coffee down, and I came for the Bowen report. Frost said you called up earlier." She sipped on her own coffee as she watched Maura dab at her face to catch the stray liquid from the eye drops. "Maura, why are you using eye drops on a Friday morning? You have a late night or something?" She leaned against the desk, one arm crossed over her torso, the other holding her cup to her face. "You find another guy to help you keep away the common cold?" The detective chuckled. "I mean, you seem a little off this morning."

Maura glanced towards her best friend before turning her attention back to the eye drops. Once she had tossed the tissue away and finished speed-blinking to clear the extra moisture, she turned her full attention back towards Jane, taking in the full attire, cheerful demeanor, and three cups of coffee in the carrier. "A late night, yes, but not with a guy." Clunky heels clicked dully as she walked past Jane to round her desk and take her seat. On the way, with one smooth movement, she took one cup from the carrier and dropped the little bottle into Jane's blazer pocket. "I'm using eye drops for the same reason you should," she added in curt explanation. "It stops people from thinking I'm hung over. By the way, I know I've told you this before, but I really like that scented spray you use. It works beautifully with your body chemistry."

"My eyes are not blood shot, Maura. They're fine. I checked them in the mirror this morning, and I… wait a minute," Jane followed the honey-brunette to the lounge area of the office and settled on her usual place on the sofa. "What do you mean 'for the same reason I should be using them'? What is that supposed to mean?" The detective narrowed her eyes, frowning as she sipped her coffee.

As she drew the little bottle of hand sanitizer from her drawer of the coffee table and rubbed a dollop into her hands, the medical examiner considered the question. "Well… do you want people to assume that you're hung over? I wouldn't like to be thought of in that way. Especially by people who depend on me to be mentally alert and physically fit in order to perform my job to the best of my ability. I'd want my partner and other coworkers to feel confident relying on me." She paused. "Or my friends and family."

In her typical slumped postured position, Jane considered the pause for a heartbeat of a moment. "I don't like what you're implying," she said, voice deathly quiet. "Do you have the Bowen report or not?" She stood, eyes glaring down at the smaller woman, who didn't look intimidated in the least by Jane's posturing. "You know, never mind. Just send them up." With a cool air about her, the detective walked to the desk, picked up the coffee, and headed for the door. "I don't have to sit here and listen to this crap." She turned around, standing in the doorframe of the office. "I do my job just fine, thank you. Who was the one to bust that child molester? Who was the one to collar the perp in the last three cases? Who? Me. That's who." The glare sharpened; this time Maura looked a little bit unnerved. "You have a lot of nerve saying anything about how well I do my job." Her hands were beginning to visible shake, her complexion paling slightly. "You're supposed to be my friend, Maura, not someone else I have to prove… man, just… whatever. I'm out of here." In a huff, she turned and stomped toward the stairs.

Left to her Karim Rashid orange-red chair and her hand sanitizer, Maura considered all that she'd said, all that Jane had said. Her head tilted to one side as she ran over every word, every nuance of vocal inflection or posture, and the speed at which Jane had left her office.

As so often happened in her life, she found herself saying the right things, long past the window of meaningful opportunity. "But you admit having to check in the mirror to know they weren't bloodshot," she replied to a statement from minutes previously, followed by, "I never said you were hung over, only that people could assume it." Finally, the smaller woman closed the overdue commentary with one for herself instead of Jane. "That could have gone better. Or much worse."


	5. Chapter 5

Jane pulled into Maura's driveway and turned the car off. She slowly stepped out and checked herself in reflection of the car window. Despite the distorted view, she could tell that her t-shirt was perfectly fitted and still tucked in as it should be, and her jeans, upon inspection, still had the right press marks in the front and back.

She inhaled deeply, and the smell of Angela Rizzoli's famous meatballs filled her. The memory of a childhood filled with food and family filtered through her mind only to be shattered by the haunting guilt of the impending divorce. With a frown, she walked to the back of her car, popped the trunk, and leaned over. The flask was tucked underneath the spare tire, and it only took a few seconds to pull it out, take a few swigs, and replace it. It took a few more to gargle with the mouthwash she kept in the trunk and a few more to pop the gum and double-check her clothes.

Slamming the trunk closed, she turned to the house. She hadn't wanted to come. She'd wanted to spend her Friday night alone at home with Jo. Instead, both she and Jo were now walking up the pathway to Maura's front door. Angela had insisted, and Jane had lost the ability to tell her mother no.

"Janie, want me to walk Jo?" Tommy startled her, and Jane jumped around, nearly belting him in the mouth.

"God, Tommy, you scared the crap out of me. How many times do I have to tell you not to walk up on a cop like that? Jesus Christ."

The youngest Rizzoli held his hands up. "Sorry! I was just coming in from taking the trash out. I thought you saw me at the curb. Say," he leaned a little closer to her, "what are you hiding in the trunk anyway?"

"Listerine. I drink coffee like water and Frost started complaining about stale coffee breath, so I keep a bottle back there. Didn't you see me spit it out?" She nodded her head toward her car.

"Yeah, wondered what it was. Not very ladylike, Jane. You better not let Ma see you spitting like that." He squatted down to scratch Jo behind the ear. "You know, I used to use that stuff after I'd take a shot. Covers the scent right up." He glanced up at his big sister, dark eyes shining in the low light of evening, "So, I mean, I guess I could see where it'd work for coffee, too."

"Yeah," Jane glanced away, running the back of her hand across her mouth, "I'm going to go in. If you want to walk Jo…"

"I do. Ma has it in her head that I need to learn to cook. I have it in mind to stay the hell out of the kitchen." He took the leash from Jane's hand. "I figure if I stay busy, she can't make me do jack."

"Picking up my bad habits, Tommy?" She smirked at her younger brother.

"Maybe. You know, siblings, they tend to pick up each other's bad habits, sis." With a shrug, he clicked his tongue. Jo gave a little happy yelp and followed along as Tommy headed out for a walk.

Jane watched them for a moment before turning to go inside. "Ma? Maura?"

"In the kitchen!" Angela's voice rang out over the sound of cooking.

"Of course," Jane grumbled. "Hey, I ran into Tommy. He's walking Jo for me."

"He was supposed to help me with the meatballs! Sometimes I think your brother's never going to learn to cook. I don't know how he eats." With a roll of her eyes, Angela handed a spoon to her daughter. "Go help Maura stir the sauce and tend to the pasta."

"Yeah, sure." Jane sighed but did as she was told, taking up a spot next to Maura at the stovetop. She stared down at the sauce with a frown, dropped the spoon in, and began to stir. "Thirty years old, youngest detective to ever hit homicide, more medals and awards than I can think of, and the best I can do on a Friday night is stir my mother's meatball sauce." She shook her head, lips pursed in thought.

Maura shifted her weight from one foot to the other, drawing her hip close enough to gently knock into Jane's. It was as good a greeting or peace offering as they would get; Maura's hands were covered in flour as she rolled a long sheet of pasta between the blades of the hand-cranked cutter to turn it into fettuccini. "Hey," she murmured softly, managing to lace her tone with quiet apology. "After this, would you like to stay over, you and Jo? I have _The Thomas Crowne Affair_. Original and remake, directors' cuts. Or I have some chicken flicks." That was one slang phrase she knew correctly, but enjoyed teasing Jane with incorrect ones now and again.

She warmed to her subject as Angela browbeat Frankie into tidying the dining room and setting the table, their louder speech covering up her quieter voice. "We could watch them, make some kind of fattening dessert. Maybe I'll do your hair. You always say you like the way it feels. And I miss you."

Jane ran her free hand across the back of her neck. "I don't know, Maura. I mean, it's been a long week, and I just," she glanced over to see the pleading look on her friend's face. "I can't deal with Ma, okay. Why don't," Jane winced, "you come over to my place tonight after dinner? Maybe Ma can watch Jo and the turtle?" After a brief pause, she said, "And it's 'chick flick', not 'chicken flick'. I know you know better." The chuckle she gave undercut the chastisement in the detective's voice.

"You know better, too," the shorter woman reminded her friend with a warm smile. "Bass is a tortoise. But yes, that sounds good." Deftly she drew her left hand away from the pasta machine as her right hand continued to crank out a two-feet-long stretch of fettuccini. It was a relief, in fact, that Jane had consented to one chaperoned night, though Maura hoped she would not think of it as such. "I think I prefer staying at your place, anyway. It feels more like a real sleepover."

"That's only because you have to sleep with me," Jane shot back, a smile creeping across her face. "That didn't come out right, but you know what I mean." She shook her head. "Just, give me a few to tidy up before you come over, okay? The place is a mess, and I'd feel bad if you had to deal with that. I know how you are about that kind of thing." Eyes steadfast on the sauce, she kept her voice light and even, waiting and hoping Maura would consent to giving her a head start.

Maura nodded yes, both to the request and the suggestion. "Actually, you're probably right," she mused, draping each long piece of fettuccini on the wooden pasta-drying stand. "I do sleep better with another body beside me. That was always the best thing about boarding school and college. I wasn't popular to hang out with, being so much younger than my classmates, but at night anyone who missed her younger sister at home knew whom to invite in for a cuddle. Even today, at least half of what I want from sex is the partnered sleep that I get afterward." She shot Jane a wink and a chuckle as she admitted, "The before is pretty good, too."

Before Maura could mention the _during_part of sex, Angela returned to the kitchen for the pitcher of ice water for the table. "How's it coming, girls?" she asked, giving each one a hug around the shoulders. "Jane, the sauce looks good. Turn it off. Maura, good job on the pasta. Is that the last of it?"

"Yes. It will have to rest for another half-hour before it can be used, at least, but the first three batches are ready, and that should be more than enough for all of us. I think the water's boiling now, if you'd like to take over."

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><p>"Maura's going over to your place tonight? How long is she going to stay? All weekend?" Angela handed a wet dish to her daughter to dry it.<p>

Jane shrugged. "I don't know. You know how Maura is. She gets it in her head she wants to do something, and that's what she does. She didn't say anything about invading my space all weekend, but she might." Jane put the dish away and took the next one. "Hope not, though."

Angela gave her daughter a gentle smack on the upper arm. "You should be nicer to her!"

"Ma, I am nice to her. I'm just saying that I want at least a little downtime this weekend, that's all. It's been a long week, and I just…"

"Jane," Angela's voice was harsh, "after everything Maura has done for us, if she wants to spend some time with you, the least you could do is spend some time with her. She's your best friend. Why wouldn't you want to spend time with your best friend? This is exactly the reason you don't have a man in your life."

"Please don't start." Her daughter's voice was tired, beaten.

"Start what? I'm just saying that, if you would just open up to people and not be so difficult to get along with, then maybe you wouldn't be alone. Jane, I worry about you. You should…"

"I know. I know, Ma. You tell me all the time what I should do." The detective snapped. "Tell Maura I went home. Jo's staying here. Tommy," the youngest Rizzoli looked up from the table where he was folding the cloth napkins for the place setting decorations, "Stay out of trouble this weekend. Frankie," the other brother glanced nervously toward his sister from his spot by his brother where he was helping, "if he does get in trouble, you deal with it. Don't call me. Don't text me. Don't email me. Don't come to my place. Leave me the fuck alone. That goes for Maura, too, when you see her."

She turned back to her mother, eyes blaring with unsung anger, "I mean it, Ma. Leave. Me. Alone."

"How dare you talk to me like that! I'm your mother. I gave birth to you, and… Jane. Jane! Where are you going?"

"Home," came the answer just as the front door slammed closed.


	6. Chapter 6

Jane stomped to her car, flipped the trunk open, pulled the half empty flask out, and slammed it closed. Settling behind the wheel, she carefully pulled out of the drive to avoid the Prius before spinning out toward her apartment, flask in hand.

She downed the rest of the whiskey in a few gulps as she drove on, her anger and guilt melting with the slow burn of the alcohol. The distraction and her slowed reaction time were enough to make her miss the red light.

Her car came to a screeching halt on the other side of the light. The minivan's horn rang in her ears, and her mind flashed to the terrified face of the young girl she could see in the back seat. She took in a shuddering breath as the small face floated in front of her mind's eye, illuminated by the harsh shine of her headlights as she swerved, barely missing the minivan's back bumper by the narrowest of margins.

"Oh God," she breathed, "I can't keep doing this." Her hand reached for the now empty flask, and it was inches from her mouth before she realized what she was doing. "Fuck." She threw it into the backseat, took in a deep breath, and drove back to her apartment.

* * *

><p>"I don't know," Maura responded for the ninth time, her patience wearing thin. "Jane hasn't confided in me."<p>

Angela pleaded for more information, alternately demanding and wheedling. Like mother, like daughter. "She must have said something, or done something, or you saw something. You're her best friend. Anything a girl can't tell her mother, she tells her best friend."

"Yeah, Maura," Frankie chimed in, one hand on the back of the chair where the doctor was sitting, leaning in an attempt to be reassuring. "She looks like shit."

Angela frowned. "Frankie, don't talk about your sister like that!"

"Sorry, Ma, but she does. She's not losing weight, but she's getting kind of… well, not flabby, but she sure isn't tough like she used to be. When was the last time you saw her in the gym?"

"Five months ago," Maura responded when finally asked something that required her to offer a known fact. She didn't want to keep answering variations on the same question. She wanted to go to her room and cry until she didn't need to cry anymore, then shower and go to sleep. But the questions just kept coming.

Tommy, flipping idly through one of Maura's fashion magazines noted, "Her breath smells great lately, though."

"Has she been sleeping right? She doesn't look like she's been sleeping right." Angela needled Maura more.

"I don't sleep with… We don't have sleepovers much anym—"

"Well, she sure hasn't been eating right." The eldest Rizzoli continued on.

"No, I don't believe she—"

"But she's been a champ with oral hygiene." Tommy threw in.

"What's that supposed to mean, Tommy?" Angela asked, eyes narrowing.

"It means she's taking care of herself," Frankie cut in, "even if we can't see it. First sign of self-neglect is a lack of flossing."

Tommy cast a disdainful eye towards his brother, but didn't reply. Instead he focused on Maura. "If you want me to take Jo and Bass for the weekend or until you get back, I can do that."

"Back?" Maura asked, still bewildered by the overlapping questions, arguments, and concerns. She knew that this was the Rizzolis' way of caring, of demonstrating their considerable affection for one another, but that didn't make it any easier to follow along. "Where am I going?"

But of course, she already knew. She just hadn't known that Tommy knew.


	7. Chapter 7

_Knock knock knock _"Jane?"

_Knock knock knock_"Jane."

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK_ "JANE! Open this door, or I swear, I'll break the window and let myself in."

The inside lock slowly slid open, and the door swung quietly inward, exposing the inside of the apartment. "Bet you would, too," Jane said quietly as she turned, not bothering with the formalities of asking Maura to come in. "You know the drill," she said, words slightly slurred as she plopped back down on the sofa and picked the whiskey bottle up to refill the glass in her hand. "Won't do any good to tell you to leave me the fuck alone, will it?" She threw the whiskey down her throat and poured another, eyes glued to the muted game flickering across her television set.

"None whatsoever, since I intend to invade your space all weekend," Maura quoted Jane with determined cheer as she made for the kitchen for two glasses of ice water and to serve up a bowl of fettuccini from the plastic container she'd brought. While waiting for the microwave to reheat it, she checked the garbage can, noting, "These newspapers, tin cans, and whiskey bottles can be recycled. I'll take care of that in the morning."

_Beep beep beep beep!_

"Oh, good, your noodles are ready." More rummaging, all of it annoying; Maura took no care at all not to make the headache she was confident Jane probably already had worse. "Here you go. Noodles with marinara sauce and meatballs, ice water, here's your fork and napkin."

Once she'd placed everything she'd brought within Jane's reach, Maura took her time dragging her overnight bag into the bedroom, then came back to sit beside her best friend. Her lips pursed. "You're not eating, Jane. You need to eat. _Mangia."_ Oh, cute. Angela had taught her how to order Jane to eat, in Italian.

Jane said nothing. She simply continued to watch the game and take sips of her drink. When a commercial came on to break her concentration, she turned her dulled eyes to the woman next to her. "I'll vomit if I eat now. Too much," she tilted the glass in her hand up. "You know." Her eyes ran over the various items sitting on her coffee table. "You _do_ know, don't you?" Disgust ran across her face as her gaze settled on the whiskey bottle.

"I know," Maura confirmed. "Eat what you can without getting sick. If you want to get sick, you've got whiskey for that. No need to waste your mother's good cooking." She settled back as if completely comfortable, slipped off her shoes, and propped her feet on the table.

"You shouldn't be here." Jane set the empty glass down beside the now empty bottle. "No one should be here." She stood on unsteady feet and made her way to the kitchen. She glanced to Maura and saw her watching, thought for a moment about what she was about to do, shrugged, and pulled out another bottle from her stash in the cabinet. "Pass out before I'll get sick," she slurred as her numbed fingers fumbled with the bottle's top. She was too busy focusing on keeping upright and the bottle in her hand to see Maura's the horrified expression flicker quickly across her face as she caught a glimpe of just how many spares Jane had in the cabinet. "S'okay, doc, I know to sleep on my side so I don't drown," she almost formed a smirk before her face fell into a slackness that only comes with too much alcohol. "Go home, baby, I got this." The top came off with a mighty twist, and a little of the brown liquid sloshed onto the counter top. Jane didn't notice.

She didn't bother with a glass. There was no point.

"You know," she said, leaning against the counter to steady herself. "I almost," another drink, "I almost hit a minivan driving home tonight? Did you know that? Bet you didn't know that." She took another long pull. "First thing I said to myself was I had to stop this shit," she held the bottle up. "Second thing I said to myself was, 'Fuck,' because my flask was empty. Did you know I have a flask hidden in the car? Bet you didn't know that either. I'm pretty good about that stuff. I've got rules, you know." She frowned, glancing from Maura to the bottle in her hand.

"Fuck, I'm breaking a whole crap ton of them right now, though." She shrugged. "Oh well. Whatever. _You_ know," she took another drink, letting the thick glass hit the counter top with a clinking thud, "Doesn't matter. You _know_, and, you know, there was a little girl in that van? I almost killed a whole family. What the fuck kind of homicide detective am I that I almost murder an entire family? Crappy one, that's what. I'm just fucked up, Maura," she said gesturing toward her bathroom. "The mirror's right. The mirror's always fucking right." She sighed, hanging her head, letting her forehead rest on the cool space on the counter's top.

Without a word, Maura stood up to go to the bathroom. She came back a few minutes later. "It wasn't right before, but it's right now. You're not a failure, Jane. You're a person who's making some big mistakes right now." There was no judgment on her face. "Do you want to fix them?"

"I don't even know anymore, and I'm pretty sure I'm too drunk to figure it out if I did." She let her head fall back to the counter. "I think I'm about to pass out." She stood and made her unsteady way to the bedroom.

She fell onto her bed with a grunt, and placed one hand on her nightstand to steady her as she leaned much further than she needed to pull open the nightstand drawer. "Stopped being able to sleep," she slurred as she pulled the locked journal out, its matte black cover giving off a dull shine in the dim light of her beside lamp. "Had to find a way to make it stopped. Tried all sorts of crap." She looked down at the journal in her hands. "Crappy read," she held it up to Maura. "If you're going to invade, might as well be thorough about it." She tossed it in Maura's general direction, grunting in satisfaction as it hit the floor by the other woman's feet with a loud whacking sound. "S'all I got," Jane mumbled as she fell back onto the bed, rolling reflexively onto her side as she slipped into welcomed unconsciousness.


	8. Chapter 8

For the next few hours, Maura read Jane's journal. Each entry began with fairly neat printing, which later devolved into sloppiness as her hand got tired and, likely, the whiskey started taking its toll. At least, that was the pattern at first. Later journal entries began messy already, gradually becoming a barely legible scrawl. Sentences started but were not completed, ideas abandoned halfway through. Throughout each entry, common themes sprang up again and again: loss, abandonment, failure, confusion, fear, inadequacy.

After the first two hours, Maura put down the journal to shower, clean up the cold ignored food, and dress for bed. Then she came right back to the journal, unwilling to abandon Jane in the smallest particular: she had opened her journal, her thoughts, and Maura would take and cherish each one, hurt though it did to read them all.

Weeks, months of anguish poured off of every page, glowing with pain. Maura finished her own glass of water, then Jane's, then refilled another, just to replenish what she lost in crying for her friend. She had known there were problems, but had not truly known they ran this deep.

_Because she couldn't tell me. Not even when I asked._ Her mind readily supplied the logic, but it helped not a whit to alleviate the blame she began to place on herself. I should have sensed this. _Some genius I am, if I couldn't see this happening till a month ago. Some best friend to not be able to confront her and offer help until now.__She's not the failure. I am._

When she had puzzled out the last word written, Maura allowed herself to continue crying until she couldn't anymore. She took a second shower to cool her hot, pounding head and get rid of the salty tracks of tears down her cheeks and neck. She erased the message she'd left Jane on the bathroom mirror: No one needed to see ALCOHOLIC the first thing in the morning, especially when Jane had written FAILURE on her own. A new message was in order, and Maura wrote it in bigger, bolder letters so that Jane would not be able to avoid it - LOVED.

She fetched one more glass of water as well as a painkiller and moved through the darkened bedroom to set them on the nightstand by Jane's head. Maura had observed many sorority sisters and dates in the throes of hangovers, and hoped to spare her friend from the worst effects.

Then she crawled into bed and pulled Jane's inert body close to hers, draping one arm around her waist so that Jane would wake her if she got up for any reason. As Jane stirred and fussed a little at the repositioning, she whispered soothingly, "I'm here. Sleep, little spoon." Kissing Jane's shoulder to comfort whichever one of them she could, Maura closed her eyes and finally slept.

* * *

><p>It hurt to move. The room spun, her head pounded, and she was pinned at the waist by something. With great effort, she slowly opened one eye to see the glass of water and pills sitting quietly on her nightstand. Glancing down, she saw what pinned her. The perfectly manicured hand could only belong to Maura.<p>

She lay staring down at the hand for a long moment trying to decide what to do. Bits and pieces of the night before came filtering into her mind, broken… fragmented. She remembered most of it. She remembered throwing her journal at Maura's feet. Panic ran through her. Maura would have read it. Maura would know about the dreams she had where she couldn't save her best friend. Maura would know about the guilt she felt over Tommy's life and her parent's divorce. She would know. She would know everything.

Carefully moving the sleep limp arm from her waist, Jane sat slowly up. She stood uneasily, popped the pills, downed the water, and made her way to the bathroom. She turned the water on and let it run to warm, not bothering to turn the light on. She knew it would hurt. Instead, she left the door open for light as she went through her morning routine and stepped into the shower. She brushed her teeth as she let the warm water beat down on her aching muscles and throbbing head. When she was clean, she stepped out, wrapped herself in her favorite big, fluffy green towel, and finally turned the light on in the bathroom to get a better look at herself in the mirror.

She saw it, Maura's perfect handwriting on the mirror. The big black letters scrolling neatly across her reflection startled her at first then confused her. She stood, dumbfounded, as her eyes focused, unfocused, and then focused again on the word painted across her reflection. "No," she whispered as she backed into the wall behind her, one hand holding onto her towel, the other running across her face. "No, she's wrong. She's so wrong," she said to herself as she slid down the wall, pulling her knees against her chest and pulling her reflection from the word on the mirror.

The sobs came. There was no stopping them this time. There was no bottle close enough by, and her body was too tired and too beaten to allow her to walk the short distance to where she knew the whiskey was waiting. She was tired.

Tired. Scared. Lost … "and alone and unloved," she said aloud into the quiet as she let her forehead fall against her knees.

"No, you're not."

The voice came simultaneously with the little flutter of air caught by Maura's nightgown as she rapidly and gracefully sank to kneel on the floor beside Jane, enfolding her in strong arms and kissing the side of her very mussed head. "I know you feel that way, though. Sweetheart, I'm so sorry. I tried, we all tried, to be okay for you. We thought you'd need to see us being normal, being happy, so you'd know that you wouldn't have to be sorry for hurting us. But we were wrong, weren't we?"

One arm remained around the lanky woman's hunched body, but the other delicate hand drew back her hair, combed it away from flushed face and sweat-dampened neck. "We should have let you know we were hurt, so you didn't feel like you were alone in it. I'm sorry, Jane. You're not alone, and you're not unloved. You have no idea—" She broke off, with the excuse of giving one more good full-body squeeze. "You're just not."

"I'm sorry, Maura. I'm so sorry," the sobs died down only slightly, as Jane's body shook. She remained where she was, letting the other woman do as she pleased. "I tried to get it right, but I just keep fucking it up. I can't… no matter how hard I try, I just can't get it right. I can't find anyone, and I disappoint Ma. I can't get Tommy to see that he's better than what he chooses to be. I can't get Frankie to stop following my lead because, let's face it, it'll only fuck him up, too. I couldn't stop my parent's divorce because I was too busy sulking around here because I shot myself. Why? Why did I shoot myself? To save Frankie. Ma's right. Frankie wouldn't have even been in that kind of trouble if it wasn't for me. And I'm constantly lashing out at you, and that's not fair," she sniffed, finally looking up to meet the other woman's eyes. "It's not fair to you, Maura. You deserve so much better, and I feel like I'm holding you back, which is crazy because we're not... I mean," she shook her head, "You deserve a better friend than me. God," she leaned back, letting her head hit the wall with a thud, "I'm such a fucking failure." She pointed to the mirror. "That's what was up there. You should have left it, and you should have gone back last night. You should have left the truth up there, and you should have just left me. I'm toxic."

Maura shook her head no as she listened to the self-loathing coming from the other woman. "No, sweetheart, that's not you. That's not the Jane I know. You aren't to blame for your parents' divorce, and you couldn't have stopped it even if you'd known it was coming. You can't be blamed for Tommy's past mistakes, though he himself gives you a lot of the credit for how well he's doing now, and I do too. If Frankie makes mistakes, they'll be his mistakes, not yours." She sat back on her heels, scooting around to get in Jane's direct line of sight. "Are you listening, so far? You don't have to agree, but are you at least listening? Are you hearing me, or are you stuck listening to just yourself? Be here with me right now, Jane. I need you to be present."

Jane answered slowly, just a small nod. Maura continued once again, leaning forward to pull Jane's head closer for a kiss to the temple, then sat back and offered both hands. "You've hurt me. Do you know how you hurt me? You did it by hurting yourself. You didn't have many other viable options, but you did shoot through yourself in order to let the EMTs get to your brother, and the fact that your life was endangered hurt me. I've tried to be okay, at least when you're around, so you wouldn't see that. It was wrong of me. I should have been honest with you. My therapist will be glad to know that I see that, now."

That was new. Jane had been ordered to see a therapist, as was policy with any officer-involved shooting, and it was likewise required of Korsak and Frost because they were present, but Maura? Apparently so. The surprise at finding that medical examiner was also in counseling showed briefly on Jane's face, then it once again filled with guilt at forcing her best friend to have to seek such a thing.

"Jane? Stay with me. I need you to be here with me. Please." Maura caught the scarred hands of her friend and pulled them gently out of their knot and towards herself. "You're hurting me now, too. I'm not going to hide it from you anymore when you do that. Hiding it has only been contributing to your state of numbness, and I'm not going to help you be numb anymore. I'm not going to stock your beer in my fridge, and I'm not going to ask you out for drinks. I'm your friend, and I love you, so I'm not going to contribute to your ability to hurt yourself anymore because when you hurt yourself, that's what hurts me the most. I'm through sitting back and analyzing. I'm through just watching you batter yourself over things that were never in your control. From now on, I'm going to take an active role in your life. I'll be so up in your business that I'll be worse than five mothers to you, and you're going to let me, Jane. Do you know why?"

Wide eyed, Jane silently shook her head no.

"Because you didn't mention my name once in your journal, outside of one particular context." Maura licked her lips, took a deep breath, and plunged forward. "And that context was the fear of losing me. It's in almost everything you wrote in your journal, either fresh dreams or memories of previous ones when discussing almost any other subject. You dreamed I was dying, and you couldn't keep me alive. So I know, Jane. I know you love me, and I know you're afraid of losing me. And letting me be here with you, letting me help you? That's how you're going to keep that from happening."

Silence filled the tiny room as Jane processed. It took time for her to stop crying, and it took time for her body to unfurl from the ball it was in. It took time for her pull herself together enough to answer, and, when it came, her voice was barely a hoarse whisper. "I don't know if I can, Maura."

Maura got to her feet, not letting go of Jane's hands, and tugged. "You can," she murmured in absolute trust. "Now, come sit with me in the kitchen while I make you some breakfast, and we can talk somewhere besides this bathroom floor. Need a hand up?"

"No, I just… just give me a moment." Jane wiped at her face. "I'm a little cold." She glanced down at her towel, nodding at it. "It's my favorite towel, but not so great at protecting me from stuff, you know? And," she slowly stood on her own, "I'm a mess. I just want to wash my face and go put some clothes on. Okay?" The towel slipped, Jane panicked, and she quickly caught it by slamming her hand against her chest. A loud thump echoed through the room. "Ouch."

"Are you okay?" Maura hurriedly blurted out, but several things happened in rapid succession that obviated the need for an answer. Maura darted forth to assist Jane at the sound of the thud, but then froze, eyes flicking ceilingwards as she realized that was a highly problematic idea. Her hands dove behind her back, clasping one another. The nightgowned woman took a step backward, nearly losing her balance as the trash can impeded her movements and prevented her catching herself that way. Arms flailed amid squeaks of alarm, one reaching out in front of her towards the general vicinity of Jane, while the other shot backward then found purchase on the sink's edge to stop her fall. A close call – she'd only barely avoided catching the towel instead of Jane's arm, thereby embarrassing them both.

Once realizing that she had stabilized, Maura let out a nervous laugh as she backed out of the bathroom, retying her robe. "Whoo. Close. Heh. Okay. So, um, if you're not hurt, why don't you get some clothes on? I'll start breakfast."


	9. Chapter 9

Breakfast was quiet but relatively comfortable. They talked about small things as they both tried to adjust to the events that seemed to be unfolding before them. As they began to clean up, Jane started to wash the dishes. Washing the dishes quickly progressed to simply trying to hold a dish to wash it as her hands shook uncontrollably.

Finally, she gave up, letting the bowl slip back into the water as she stepped back, body turning toward the cabinet. While Maura was busy putting things away in the fridge, Jane stood and stared at the closed cabinet door, body rigid, hands shaking, skin gone pale, and a slight sweat breaking out across her exposed skin.

She stood, staring at the closed door knowing what was behind it and using every ounce of self-control she had left not to open it to stop the tremors, stop the frustration, stop… everything. Just one shot would be all it took, but Maura was there, and she had rules. Instead of doing anything, the tall, lanky brunette stood still and did nothing at all.

She was stuck; she couldn't move forward because she was afraid of where she might go, and she couldn't go back to what she was doing because she was afraid she would do something else instead of what she should be doing.

Taking seriously her duty of putting away the remaining butter, jam, and other foodstuffs, Maura turned around to pick up the newest dish on the rack, only to find that there was none. "Jane? Where's the other bowl? Did you leave it on the table?" She glanced at the water, which thanks to a small load wasn't all that murky, and spied the bowl at the bottom. Worried hazel eyes flicked towards the taller woman's face, then at the cabinet behind Jane's head. "Jane?" Before the name had even passed Maura's lips, she had abandoned the French butter crock and stepped towards her friend's side. There was no question of whether Jane was okay; she clearly wasn't. "What can I do to help you right now?"

"I honestly don't know. I don't… I can't," Jane closed her eyes, hands clenching at her sides. "I'm going to do this, Maura. I am, but," opening her eyes, she backed away slowly reaching behind her as her eyes remained on the door. As her hand came into contact with a chair, she slowly sat down. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she gave a harsh whisper of a demand. "Pour them out."

Immediately Maura turned to do Jane's bidding, moving swiftly and efficiently, yet without apparent distress or hurry in any part of her but her face. Soft hands opened the wooden cabinet door and removed three full bottles and one partial. Maura winced at the quantity. She opened the first and poured it out, amber liquid so beautiful in color, rich in fragrance.

The soft _purk purk purk purk_as it gurgled out of the narrow bottle neck, the initial impact of whiskey with stainless steel sink, and the gurgle as it wasted away down the drain – it was heartbreaking, such a waste, or would have been if it hadn't been the cheapest, least appealing brand on the market. As it was, it was still a monetary waste, despite the fact that Jane had apparently become accustomed to economizing in order to be able to afford more of this bad medicine.

Three more times, Maura broke seals and wasted the contents, then rinsed each bottle with hot water to remove the scent from the house. When it was all gone from the cabinet, she turned around and asked, "Where's the rest?"

She knew.

Jane wiped at her mouth with the back of a shaking hand. "Maura," she began to deny it, but she just could not lie to Maura. At least, she couldn't do it right now. Right now, she had the will to admit to herself she had a problem. Right now, she was strong enough to admit where all her hiding places were. She could do this right now, and she should while she was still strong enough to do so. She closed her eyes and gave the answer. "Bottom drawer of my night stand. Bedroom closet, top shelf in the back. Behind the laundry detergent in the washroom. Linen closet in the bathroom behind the towels. Entertainment center where the VHS's are in that bottom drawer. Flask is under my pillow; took it in from the car after last night."

Maura waited for a long moment, one brow lifting in silent question, until she was certain that there were no more secret stashes left for Jane to disclose, then went to each one and rid the house of whiskey entirely. When she returned from the last stop, she was carrying her cellphone; her voice had been heard, but the words not distinguishable until she was back in the front room with Jane again, one hand ghosting across the shoulders on her way to the fridge. "…of it. Every last bit, Peter. Contact every oenophile and auction house you can find, discreetly, and see what you can do. Celerity is more important than revenue. All right, thank you. Just get it to an expert's care as soon as possible. Try Maurice Quigley; I believe he's in the country right now. Thank you, Peter."

Whiskey was only one kind of alcohol; there was still the beer in the fridge, as well as two bottles of her own wine that she'd left here over a month ago, the last time she'd been welcomed. Without an instant of mercy or regret, she went after every bit of it, pulling it out and uncapping or uncorking every bottle, then enriching the life of the drain pipe with grape, with hop and barley.

When the entire apartment was free, she moved back to Jane's side and stood by her chair, placing one hand atop her friend's morning-mussy hair. "Still present?"

"More or less," Jane cleared her throat. "What was that phone call about?" She reached up to pull the hand on her head down. Threading her fingers through Maura's, she looked up, waiting. Her eyes said she needed the distraction even as her hands trembled and her body twitched.

"I found one more stash," Maura replied easily, and since the one hand had been taken possession of, the other took its turn in petting and stroking Jane's hair, head to neck to spine. "Mine."

"You didn't have to do that. I know how you feel about your wine, Maura. I can't ask you to turn your life upside down just because I've let mine go all to hell." As she spoke, Jane leaned in, resting her head against the doctor's lean frame. She sighed heavily, "Thank you."

Maura's eyes closed as she wrapped her arm around Jane's head and shoulders, pulling her closer into her body, still clad in her nightgown and robe, protecting and comforting. It took several seconds longer than usual for her to speak, though she had the words. "Sweetheart," she replied, voice thick and heavy, as her fingers idly stroked Jane's cheek and jawline, "you may know how I feel about wine, but you clearly don't know how I feel about you if you think you're not far more important to me."

"Maybe not," came the muffled answer.

For a time, they remained that way before Jane pulled out. "I feel bad, Maura. I feel really bad, and cold and hot and shaky, and… it's hard for me to think, and… honestly, if you weren't here, I'd probably be licking the empty bottles right now. I think… can we go lay down, away from… I can still smell it, and I need," she shook her head. "I have a problem. I need help… Do you think I can do this without rehab? My job, my reputation… God, I've fucked it all up." Her eyes flicked back to the cabinet door, a reflex.

Rather than giving direct verbal assent, Maura simply let her hands give Jane a gentle tug towards standing height, stepped back just enough to allow Jane to rise without bumping into her on the way up. "Go lie down, Jane. I'll clean out the sink so you can't smell it anymore. I do know a therapist who will treat you outside the rubric of the BPD, so they won't be able to ask questions about your issues or your fitness to serve. I'll call her a little later if you want. Right now, get back into pajamas. A fresh pair. I'll meet you in there and we'll talk about your options."

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later, the sink smelled of lemon-scented industrial strength cleaner, the kind Jane used on her bathtub whenever she'd come back from an especially nasty crime scene. Maura, still rubbing a nicer-smelling lotion into her hands, joined Jane in the bedroom.<p>

Jane lay curled on her side facing the middle of the bed. Her breathing was labored, and body still twitched. She physically winced at the feel of Maura sliding under the covers next to her. "Why does it hurt?" She groaned, taking in a shaky breath. "Three months, that's all. It's only been three months."

"I suspect," Maura replied, using one of her many work-arounds that did not require her to admit to guessing, "it's because this isn't primarily a physical addiction yet. At least, I very much hope you haven't been that quick to damage yourself." She curled around Jane to provide as much comforting contact as possible. "If I'm correct, it hurts because of the causes of your drinking, not because of the drinking itself. It's just that you've forgotten how much you feel when you're not numb to it anymore."

Burying herself in Maura's protective hold, Jane exhaled, allowing herself to be comforted. "I'm never going to sleep again." She gave a humorless chuckle. "Okay," she said, scooting even closer to the other woman, "Tell me my options."


	10. Chapter 10

Maura remained with Jane through the rest of the weekend as they worked out a plan for Jane to find the help she needed. The appointment for the psychiatrist Maura had mentioned was made, and, a week after Jane nearly hit a minivan with a family of three, she was sitting in a waiting room waiting to talk about it.

The deep mahogany wood paneling with hunter green accents gave the waiting room an enclosed feeling to Jane, like she felt when she went with Maura to the country club for dinner. She fidgeted, flipping quickly through a _Better Homes_ magazine, setting it down, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, and generally acting like a squirmy 3 year old.

When her name was finally called, she glanced around the quiet room as if expecting someone there to recognize it, but no one looked up or even acknowledged her. Maura had dropped her off and gone to a call. Jane had taken a half day, citing a doctor's appointment. No one questioned her. Between the shooting, the scalpels, and the other various injuries to her body, everyone assumed she was going to see a doctor for her body, not her mind.

She took in a deep, shuddering breath as she stepped into the room behind the large, wooden door. Her left hand landed on the butt of her service piece, subconsciously pushing her blazer aside to flash both gun and badge. Her right hand opened and closed, fingers dragging across the scar on her palm as she stood just inside the closed door looking around the room, taking in everything to see and processing it.

The doctor's appearance was unusual, but comforting, even before she spoke. Short of stature, round of figure, she looked like a mother goddess figure. Murky green eyes bore tiny epicanthic folds, suggesting partial East Asian heritage, but her creamy cinnamon skin spoke of Africa, and the freckles, eye color, and reddish-brown hair hinted at Scots or Norse ancestry despite a wide, flat, Mayan nose. She was the entire world. Little knickknacks and photographs gave the office the homelike feel of a living room owned by someone who had been places, without seeming pretentious. Other than the obligatory diploma and license to practice, which were displayed but not with prominence, there was nothing in the way of personal glorification.

Her rich, warm voice underscored the visual mixed signals, with its cosmopolitan accent, or rather, accents. Northern Canada, southern US, a hint of upper East Coast – what couldn't this woman claim as her home? "Good afternoon," she offered, and it sounded as though she sincerely hoped it would be. "I'm Dr. Georgia Dearborn. What would you like me to call you, and do you shake hands?"

It was all on reflex. Jane swaggered in toward the middle of the room where the doctor stood, offered her right hand, and responded in a clear, confident voice, "Detective Jane Rizzoli." She paused for a heartbeat and then gave a huff of air. "Jane's fine." She shook hands quickly and then pulled the offered hand back. The fingers of her left hand began to run along the scars of right. "So… how do we do this?"

The doctor's eyes flicked towards the gun, but offered no opinion, no judgmental eyebrow lift or scowl, no acceptance either. "Take a seat anywhere that looks comfortable," she offered, gesturing a welcome. There was a couch, but there were also comfortable chairs, exactly like a sitting room; and too, there was a desk with two office chairs facing it. There was even a corner with a papa-san bowl chair and some scattered floor cushions. Every different type of physical or emotional comfort was available. "Now, you were kind enough to let your police department therapist provide me with your files, and I'm grateful for that. It means there's information we don't have to go over again. Have there been additional events or issues that you didn't have just three months ago when you were initially cleared for duty, or have you come out of a desire to give yourself a little more good care than what the city was willing to pay for?"

"Yeah," Jane pulled the word out, stalling, as she winced and headed for the two chairs in the corner of the room. She took the one facing the door, her back to the wall. "There's more, and, if the PD knew, they'd kick me off the force. What happens here stays here, right? I mean, it's like Vegas? The city won't know what's going on unless I fu… mess up on the job, right?" She slumped down in the chair, hands running over each other, another nervous twitch.

"I don't work for the city, the state, or your parents. I work for no one but you," replied the psychiatrist with a smile as she sat down across from her newest patient. "If you tell me you're going to hurt yourself or someone else on purpose, I have to follow legal procedure. Other than that, nothing you say here will ever be shared with anyone. The only reason I take notes or record sessions, in fact, is just so that I can remember important details of things you might want to address in future sessions, and those notes are locked away very securely. Speaking of that, would you rather be recorded, or would you prefer that I take notes in shorthand?"

Once those little housekeeping matters were handled, the doctor said, "Well, now, Miz Jane. Suppose you tell me where you're comfortable starting, hm?"

"Jane. Just Jane." The detective shifted in her seat. "Jane's fine," she mumbled as she looked down at her hands. "I… I've got," she sighed, closing her eyes and talking to herself she mumbled, "I promised her." Opening her eyes, she looked up to meet the gaze of the doctor. "After they cleared me, I did okay for a week or so, but, then, I started having these really fucked up nightmares." She frowned. "Messed up. Messed up nightmares. Sorry, Maura doesn't like it when I curse." She gave a little shrug of apology. "I mean, I always have bad dreams, you know?"

She held up her hands. "Hoyt, he pretty much messed me up for life." Her hands dropped back down to her lap. "But, these dreams were really bad. I kept reliving the shooting or the time Maura was being held as a hostage, but instead of me getting shot or Maura slamming a scalpel into the guy's thigh, something goes wrong, and I can't stop it. I just can't stop it. I'm just this helpless person standing there watching as she's killed. And," she rolled her eyes, "I'm homicide, so my screwed up mind knows _exactly_ what every little detail of that kind of death would look like. If I'm not dreaming about Maura getting killed in some Godawful way, then I'm dreaming about all the times I messed up and put my family in a bad spot or where I could have stopped my two brothers from doing something that wound up hurting them, but I didn't. If it's not that, then I'm dreaming about Ma's disappointment because I'm never going to marry and have kids, or I'm dreaming about my parents' upcoming divorce."

She ran a hand through her hair, shaking it slightly to get the part to fall the other way. "My brain, it wouldn't give me any breaks, and I stopped being able to sleep at all unless… well, anyway," she shook her head, waving a hand to dismiss the thought she hadn't spoken aloud. "So, one weeknight after a really bad case where I was really tired and hadn't had a good night's sleep in over two weeks, I… bought a bottle of cheap whiskey." She swallowed, rolling her eyes skyward for a moment as she leaned back in the chair. "And I kept buying them. You don't dream when you're passed out."

Doctor Dearborn's pen flowed in swift whispers over the page, though not nearly enough to be taking Jane's every word, and there were silences in between. "Could you tell me more about the first traumatic event? I have your case files, I'd rather hear about your feelings as it was happening than the details of precisely what happened. And how did your feelings differ," Dearborn asked after a long moment to process what her patient had said, "from the way you felt when Maura was held hostage by your copycat Boston Strangler?"

Jane grunted in frustration. "I get tired of talking about Hoyt," she growled, but clearly mentally chastised herself. "Okay, yeah," she nodded, took in a deep breath, and gave the story again, mentally steeling herself to the better handle reliving the trauma once again.

"Thank you, Jane," said the doctor as her patient wound down. "I know it's not only difficult, but also tedious, to keep revisiting that. Let's go somewhere else. Could you tell me a little bit more about when Maura was kidnapped? What did you think about during that time?"

"I was pissed. I couldn't believe I'd left her alone like that. I'm supposed to protect her. I'm the cop. But no, I listened to Korsak and let her go alone when I knew she was in trouble. I was pissed off and terrified that something horrific was going to happen to her. I don't know what I'd do if she was gone. She's my best friend." The detective gave a heavy hearted sigh, shaking her head and averting her eyes.

"Let's move towards your brother for a moment," the doctor suggested when Jane showed fidgety signs of needing to switch gears. "I understand that he's also been endangered twice, once by a girlfriend and once later on. Can you tell me how you responded mentally and emotionally to that first time?"

"The first time? God," Jane rolled her eyes. "That was my fault. If Hoyt hadn't been trying to get to me, Frankie would never have been in danger. I'm fu… sorry. I mean I'm a walking disaster area. Frankie just got caught up in it. He'd never killed anyone before Lola. I made my younger brother a killer. I hate myself for that." She swallowed, shaking her head. "Ma does, too," she whispered, frowning deeply. "I can't talk about that anymore right now, okay?"

"All right," Dearborn agreed, making a quick note to go back there in another session. "I apologize for skipping around, but I want to touch all the bases that we can today, so that I can tell what the headlines are. When we continue in other sessions, we'll get the full stories. My promise. Now, if I may ask and if you're able, would you like to talk yet about the day that your brother and yourself were shot?"

Jane's lips formed a tight line for a moment as she thought about what she wanted to say. "Marino was supposed to be one of us, a good guy. I trusted him. Hell, I even turned him down when he tried to hand the gun back to me while we were in the morgue. There was no way for me to know he was dirty. But I should have known something was off. He wasn't acting right. I don't have to give you the details. I figure you've probably read all the papers, so you probably know all about the dirty crap he was doing."

She stood, pacing beside the chair she had been occupying. "Frankie was shot and hurt badly. Maura was scared and trying her best to help, but I could see it in her eyes. She sees death every day. Queen of the Dead. That's what they call her. Did you know that?" She glanced to the seated woman. "No, probably not. That's just what the jackasses in the precinct who don't appreciate her call her. But she's good at what she does. She's the best, and she knows it when she sees it. Death, I mean. My brother was going to die, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. Frankie was dying and Maura was in trouble. I just… I had to do something. I couldn't be responsible for that. I mean, Ma already hates me for getting Frankie involved with the force, and, if something happened to Maura," she stopped pacing and sat back down in the chair, elbows resting on her knees, head down. Silently, Dearborn added another note to the bottom of her legal pad.

"Marino pulled me outside, and I remember thinking that no one was going to shoot because it was me. I was screaming at them. I was saying, 'Shoot him! Shoot him!' But they wouldn't do it. I knew Frankie was going to die. I knew Maura was in serious trouble. I did the only thing I could think to do because I knew Marino could take me in a fist fight. If I was going to die, I was taking him with me. So," she leaned back in the chair, eyes closing as her hand ran over the scar on her abdomen. "I grabbed his hand with the gun in it, and I shot us both. The last thing I remember before blacking out was seeing Maura kneeling beside me putting pressure on my wound and telling me," she stopped, opening her eyes. "You know, I never thought about it before, what she was saying. She was saying, 'Don't leave me." Jane let out a long stream of air as she processed that thought. "The last thing I remember feeling was guilty for the fear and panic I saw on her face."

Again, Dearborn made a note. Her impassivity had gradually melted into involvement, Jane's recitation of facts and feelings having drawn her in as an active listener. She waited for a long moment for the patient to say more. When it became clear that she wouldn't, Dearborn replied, "Normally I grant twice to three times as much time for a first session as for any other. Right now, we haven't quite reached that time, but you already look like you've been through the wringer. And you also are speaking in feelings rather than events, which means that you really are ready for this therapy, and you're ready to start facing your life again without self-anaesthetizing your way past the things that hurt." She set down the legal pad and rose from her seat with far less difficulty than one might expect for her girth. "Why don't we stop here? Anything else I could ask you would keep you here for another few hours, and I'm guessing you'd really like to go home and process what we've done so far. Or maybe just forget about it for the night, and come back to it fresh next time, hm?"

"I'd like," Dearborn continued, "to see you two to three times a week for the first month or two, just to be sure you're getting through the worst part of it with constant help. You deserve my best work, Miss Detective," her innate informality won out, along with a little wink, "and I'd like to make sure you get it."

"I want to thank you, Jane," said the psychiatrist as she tucked her notes away, "for being so ready and willing to begin this process. I know it's going to be difficult for you, but you have a much better attitude than many of my patients, particularly those who work as police officers, military service people, and all these other macho professions. That's going to help you a lot. But I've learned from considerable experience that stress after traumatic events is very common, has many different levels and symptoms, and may be considerably delayed in its reaction – and you've had even more stress than most in your field. On the job, you're an expert in physical and mental tactics. Here, what I hope to do is provide you with some emotional tactics so you won't be derailed if you happen to have a delayed reaction to stress somewhere down the line."

Dearborn continued, "Some reactions might be physical, and anything you experience physically is a normal reaction to these things that have happened in your life. Nausea, diarrhea, sleep disturbance, fatigue, getting the shakes, all of it. You might feel a need to eat or drink more, or less. All of those things, they're normal." She paused significantly, maybe expectantly.

Jane simply nodded her understanding.

As Dearborn picked up her pen and pad to make one more note, she went on speaking. "Other reactions can be cognitive: absent-mindedness, trouble concentrating, preoccupation or flashbacks to these various traumatic events, emotional vulnerability, acute awareness and suspicion of your surroundings, the bad dreams you've described to me. Intellectually you've probably accepted all the events, but you can still experience a range of difficult emotions, behavioral reactions such as hyperactivity or lethargy, making light of what happened, outbursts of anger… But any reaction, any of these, and more, are normal reactions to abnormal events, do you feel me?"

"Well, everything on that list sucks," Jane remarked, standing to follow the doctor to the door.

"You're so right. That's why I'm going to give you a journal to write these things down in, or you can email me your thoughts throughout the week instead if you prefer, so we can track your emotional and physical symptoms of stress. Now that you understand what you might be facing," Dearborn concluded, "I hope you'll feel a little more hope about facing it. Everything you're feeling and doing is normal. You aren't sick, you're just hurt and scared. But we're going to solve this case, Detective," she smiled, "just like one of yours at work. You may or may not need me on a long-term basis. What I hope and believe is that you'll eventually be able to give yourself your own therapy, because I'll be showing you how to look honestly at events and your responses to them and how to be constructive and gentle with yourself as you cope with them."

"A journal? I can handle that, and thank you." Just as when she entered the room, Jane's left hand settled on the butt of her gun and her right reached out to shake the doctor's hand. "I appreciate this," she said with a twinkle in her eye as she stepped outside to the receptionist desk, "Dr. _George_."

Dr. Dearborn heard the nickname and mimed a swatting motion, though it came nowhere near actually hitting Jane, as if she were a fond but feisty auntie. "Oh, git on outta here, girl," she said, her Deep Southern accent suddenly and temporarily unadulterated, other than by her throaty, earthy laugh.

Smirking, Jane turned to the receptionist to set another appointment.


	11. Chapter 11

"She reminds me of you, sort of. I mean, she's got that weird eclectic taste in interior design like you do, and her accent is all kinds of all over the map. I'm betting she's from somewhere in the South, though. I think I could learn to trust her," Jane said around a mouthful of burger as she shifted on her sofa. "Fry?"

Maura leaned over to accept the fry directly into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully before answering, "I liked Georgia very much when I met her at the Women In Medicine conference last year. She does seem a very trustworthy person, a very nurturing but non-intrusive presence. I'm so glad you like her, Jane, and so pleased, and may I say, proud that you've decided to keep seeing her. I'll drive you there and back, if you'll let me do that for you. You shouldn't have to drive home after a good therapy session." Her hand stroked along Jane's cheek and jawline, tacitly admitting that she had noticed the traces of emotionality that Jane had covered before walking back out of the office to join her in the lobby. "And I just want to be there. For you, a-and for me. That is, if you're comfortable with that. If you're not, I can-"

"I'd like it if you were there," Jane assured her. "I feel safer when you're around," she admitted grudgingly. "Listen, I don't want to talk about this anymore. Let's just watch the movie, okay? We have to be back at your place tomorrow for Rizzoli dinner night, and I'd like to just chill for right now."

With no more than a smile, Maura picked up the remote and clicked the On button, having set up the DVD player before they sat down to eat. Leaning back into her end of the sofa, she got herself situated. "We can chill. I'm very good at chilling, especially when you've agreed to watch my favorite French film…" Her laugh at Jane's expression of disgust took the wind out of the sails of an argument before it could even be formed. "…_oooor_ when it's the guilty pleasure movie you picked out," she added, patting her lap as the DVD's menu popped up to the tune of Chim-Chim-Cheree from _Mary Poppins_.

"Better," Jane said as she pulled her legs up to lay them across Maura's offered lap.

* * *

><p>The week passed relatively well. Rizzoli dinner was the same as it normally was, but instead of having wine with dinner, Maura had insisted on a new tea she'd learned about in some magazine. Angela was quick to agree. She enjoyed the odd things to which Maura introduced her.<p>

Tommy seemed to be the only one to notice that Maura's wine cellar was empty and the beer was gone from the fridge, but he only made a brief comment that it was nice to have the extra space for his Mountain Dew cans.

Jane continued with a diary, which she emailed daily to her psychiatrist. She found it easier to write it just before bed and email it, and a routine developed for her in her writing. First she would run an itinerary of her day. Then, she would hit on how the major events of that day affected her and what they made her want to do. Finally, she'd reflect on what she could have done better and made her goals for the next time a similar situation arose.

Her sessions with the doctor were productive, and Maura was there to drive her to and from each appointment, giving a small nod or wave of acknowledgement to the psychiatrist on her way to meet Jane at the receptionist's desk to confirm the next appointment.

Things were running relatively fine until roughly two weeks in when Jane had a massive fight with her mother while sitting in the little café at the station.

* * *

><p>"Oh God," Jane said under her breath to Maura, "She's got that look, Maura. Ma's up to something. I can see it in her beady little eyes."<p>

"Angela's eyes aren't beady," Maura replied without thinking, preoccupied with reapplying her lip gloss after the iced tea she had drunk while Jane ate her greasy, salty, fattening, _delicious_ diner food for lunch. Self-preservation instinct kicked in rapidly, however, and she backtracked just as quickly. "But in certain moods, and particularly in this fluorescent lighting, I can see that they might appear that way from a distance."

"Cute." The detective deadpanned, her leg bouncing under the table. "Crap, here she… Hi Ma." Jane's smile stopped just short of her eyes. "What's up?"

"Hi sweetie. Maura, doesn't that dress look great on you? You really should buy more things in that color." Angela gave a warm smile to the medical examiner as her daughter gave an '_oh dear Lord what does she want_' look to the doctor.

Maura brightened considerably and smiled with a shine on her lips before blotting, then sat up straighter, almost like a peacock spreading his plumage. "Why, thank you! I nearly bought it in Cranberry, but the Aubergine drew me in. It's a little more dramatic than my usual color palette, but I think I've become very fond of it already." She was all set to keep talking, or at least to enjoy the compliment a little longer, but Jane's expression confused her. She shook her head, eyes asking a question, which she eventually had to voice when it became apparent that Jane would not be providing a translation for her. "No? Wrong answer? What did I misunderstand?"

Jane rolled her eyes. "Ma, what do you want?"

"Why do I have to want something? Can't I come over and just say hello?" Angela feigned innocence.

"No. Now spit it out. Our lunch break is almost over," Jane said lightly as she popped another tater tot in her mouth.

"Okay, fine," her mother huffed in frustration. "Jane, I got you a date!"

"You what?" The lanky brunette nearly jumped from her seat, anger twisting her features as her voice cracked with rage.

"Now, sweetie, just hear me out." The elder Rizzoli held a hand up. "His name is Josh Perkins. He's a banker, and he's really handsome. I told him…"

"No, Ma. How many times do I have to tell you that I am not going on another blind date? I cannot do this right now." Jane held her hands up, elbows on the table, fingers spread wide as she looked upward. "Why can't you listen to me?" She dropped her hands and swung her gaze around to her mother. "I don't care how good looking he is, how much money he makes, how much of a nice boy you think he is, or whatever other selling points you've got. I am not going out on a blind date right now. I just can't handle it." She glanced quickly to Maura and then back to her mother.

"Jane, just give him a chance. That's all I'm asking. Why do you want to be alone all your life, huh? How are you supposed to meet someone if you won't give anyone a chance?" Angela's voice rose slightly.

"I give people chances all the time, Ma, and look where it's gotten me. No, and I mean no. I am not doing this, and you need to stop. I don't want to be alone all my life, but…"

"So go out on this date! What's so hard about this?" Throwing her hands up in frustration, Angela added, "You're always so hard to understand, Jane. You say you don't want to be alone, but you never give anyone a chance. You say you want a family, but you're always giving me a hard time when I ask you about grandchildren. Either you do or you don't, and I can't understand why you don't. Why won't you let anyone help? Take care of you? Love you? Huh? Would that be so hard?"

"I…" Jane started to yell, looked around the room, and realized she was making a scene at work. Dropping her voice to a bare angry whisper as she stood from the table, she started again, "I am loved, and you need to back off." Shaking, a sweat breaking out over her face, she gave one last glance to Maura before throwing her napkin down and storming out of the café toward the elevators leading to the parking garage.

"I'll explain later," Maura promised hurriedly, already on her feet to follow Jane as fast as her wedge espadrilles would carry her. "Jane. Jane!"


	12. Chapter 12

She would never have caught up with Jane under her own power, especially when Jane was upset and practically flying with excess energy. However, Maura knew where Jane would go, and knew that she would have to unlock the car if she wanted to get in it, start it, then drive it all the way around to the exit, while she herself could simply step past a dividing gate and be in the other side. "Jane! Wait, please, Jane!" she called, still running, in that girly way she had.

Jane continued on, ignoring the calls as she remotely unlocked the car door and slid in starting the car and pulling out before her seat belt was fully buckled.

"No, you don't," Maura muttered as she stood right in back of the car, trusting Jane to either look back or look in the rearview mirror. "Jane, STOP!"

The car's brakes came to a screeching halt. Jane pulled forward, put the car in park, and turned the engine off. It took less time for her to be out of the car and going in the opposite direction from Maura than it did for her to make it to the car. It took her less time still to hop on Frankie's motorcycle that was parked by the elevator doors, crank the engine, pull the helmet on, and be gone.

Maura sighed, frustrated at what she momentarily saw as futility. After a few seconds to marshal her mental resources, however, she marched back into the café, picked up the purse she had abandoned to Angela's mercies, and again promised, "Later." Then she was off.

* * *

><p>The clicking of heels on the wooden floor of the Robber gave Maura's presence away without Jane ever having to look up from where she sat. Hunched over the bar, one hand holding her head up as she stared down at the drink sitting in front of her, she merely grunted at the sound.<p>

"Two weeks, three days, four hours, and," Jane checked her watch, "16ish minutes. That's how long it's been since I've had anything. I was doing pretty good." She turned the small shot glass with its brown liquid around in her hand. "Still am. I haven't actually had anything yet." She sighed, licking her lips, eyes trained on the drink. "I figured you'd come after me, and I didn't want to disappoint you. Two weeks, three days, four hours, and," she checked her watch again, "18ish minutes. Wonder how long it'll last?" She sighed.

Maura's eyes flicked towards the bartender. Her thoughts could not be more readily apparent if she began reciting them in full verse: She could ask him not to serve Jane, but that would only force Jane to go someplace where Maura would never find her if she really felt strongly about getting a drink one day.

With effort, Maura turned away from the man polishing the bartop and stood close her friend instead. Keeping her voice low, she answered without answering. "You're still doing well. Even if you had already had that drink, you'd still be doing… fairly well, because right after you drank it, you would still understand that it was a mistake. Look at me, Jane." She waited until Jane acquiesced, then met those expressive eyes. "I'm still here. You're still not alone. You're still loved. I'm here."

"Take it." Jane let her head hang again as she held the still full shot glass up and over her head. "Just... take it."

Recently manicured fingers took the shot glass and set it at arm's reach away from herself, away from Jane. "It's gone. So," she said softly, earnestly, and as always, willingly, "what can I do right now? Do you need to talk to Georgia, go back to work, or shall I just take you home? And do you want me to talk to your mother, or would you rather save that for when you're feeling a little stronger?"

"No, God no, don't tell my mother." Dark curls fell across Jane's angular features as she shook her head no. "I... I don't know. I don't know what to do. I was going to go home, but I'm here. I was going to call you, but you're here. I was going to... going to... I don't know what I was going to do. I was going to do what I've been doing, but then," she turned to look up at the other woman, "I guess I didn't." She slowly stood up, turning away from the bar. "Does Frankie know that I jacked his bike?"

"No, but I'll text him and let him know." Maura offered a hand up, managing to make it look like a mockingly courtly gesture rather than an offer of support to someone who needed it. "And don't worry, I wouldn't tell your mother anything of probative value. Just enough to convince her that you need space more than pressure at the moment. Or I could tell her we're LLBFFs," she added with a tentatively teasing smile, escorting Jane towards the door. "It worked for Giovanni. And Jorge. And the pizza delivery guy last week. And this woman down at the gym; you weren't there for that, but I should tell you the story sometime."

"How about after we get ready for bed tonight?" Jane offered as she took the hand and allowed Maura to lead her to the door.


	13. Chapter 13

"She just kept pushing me and pushing men until I finally just left." Jane's voice was both frustrated and tired. "I headed out to the parking garage thinking that I was going to go home and just give myself a timeout from everything, you know? But, then... Maura, she's chasing after me, and I'm getting more and more pissed. So, after she stands behind my car to keep me from going anywhere, I hop out, jack my brother's motorcycle, and, the next thing I know, I'm at the Dirty Robber staring down at a shot."

The detective leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands wrapped across the back of her neck as she looked down at the floor. "And, you know what?" She shook her head as her gaze met the psychiatrist's. "At first all I could think about was how disappointed Ma is with me all the freaking time and how she's always at me because I'm not pretty enough, I don't dress well enough, I don't eat right, I've got the wrong job, I'm the one responsible for Frankie being a cop, how I'm not giving her grandchildren, and all the other crap she throws at me all the time. But, then, before I was about to down it, it occurred to me that Maura would probably be coming after me, and if I did it, she'd be really hurt, and I promised her I wouldn't do that anymore. Hurt her, I mean."

She sighed, leaning back in her chair. "Well, not on purpose anyway. So, I just sat there staring at this perfectly good shot of whiskey, torn between taking that one and a few more so I can deal with disappointing my mother, and not taking it so I don't disappoint my best friend." She gave the barest of chuckles. "Damned if I do, and damned if I don't."

"And what would have disappointed you, Jane?" asked the doctor, her smooth voice soothing but not too much so. She had taken very few notes during this session, choosing to put more of her focus into listening than into recording, now that she had gotten a fairly good feel for her patient's basic personality, moods, and modes of expressing herself. "If Maura hadn't come when she did, what would you have done? Do you know? What did you truly want?"

"I wanted," Jane stood, pacing around the area by her chair as she often did, her left hand resting on the butt of her gun as she thought. "I wanted to do whatever wouldn't disappoint anyone. No, no... that's not right. I wanted," she groaned, running her free hand over her face, "I wanted to stop feeling guilty for the stuff Ma makes me feel guilty for. _That's_ what I wanted."

Dearborn's gaze rested as easily on Jane's weapon as did the detective's own hand. She understood that Jane didn't have time to go home before her appointments three times per week, but there was doubt in her mind as to whether the tall, thin woman felt truly herself without it. Now was not the session in which she wanted to ask, however. She sat back in her chair and crossed her thick legs, barely successful at it, then compromised by setting her raised ankle atop the other knee. At least that left her with a triangular lap on which to rest her legal pad, if she needed it. "I'm proud that you phrased it that way, Jane. You acknowledge that you wanted to stop feeling something. You also wanted to take control of something, rather than to control other people's reactions to you. Did you realize when you said it how important that was?"

"I... wait, what?" Jane stopped pacing and turned to stare down at the other woman. "I thought it was always important to not disappoint your mother." Her voice was completely serious, face full of confusion.

"It's important not to disappoint yourself," Dearborn corrected with a smile, "but since we're on the subject of your mother, I suppose it's time that I asked you formally to tell me about her."

Jane made a few grunting noises, a frustrated sigh, and some other guttural sounds as she sat back down. "She's my mother. She loves me. She cares about me. She's the very definition of a helicopter mom. I'm pretty sure they _based_ the definition of 'helicopter mom' on my mother, actually. She's always been there for us when we needed her. She takes Tommy back in every time he comes back from jail, so that says something right there. I mean, she cares about all of us, and she worries a lot. But... Ma, she's got a good heart. When Maura's mom came to town a little while ago and Maura needed help getting her place ready, Ma was right there. She didn't bat an eye or anything when we asked her to make all the dinner arrangements, and she's always there to tell us when she's proud of us. I mean, Ma, she's just... she's always there." With a few more grunts, Jane shifted in her chair.

"But... Ma has certain ideas on how things should be, you know? She thinks Frankie and Tommy should be in the family plumbing business with Pop, and that never happened. Frankie's a cop. Tommy's a con. Pop's gone off the deep end, hence the divorce. She thinks I should be married and having kids by now. But, I'm a detective, and I don't think I'll ever marry." She winced at the thought. "You know, Ma's life for at least 30 years has really just been focused on Pop and us kids, and she had a lot of hopes for us, and I know she mostly just wants us to be happy, but I hate seeing her disappointed all the time."

Dearborn looked very thoughtful, murky green eyes unfocused, then focusing sharply again. "What is so disappointing about you, Jane?"

"I just told you," Jane snapped and then immediately showed apology on her face. "Sorry. I mean, I did just list it off though. Ma says I don't dress right, that I dress too much like a boy. She says I'm too rough around the edges and no guy is going to want to deal with that. She says I'm too hard to get along with sometimes," she sighed, rolling her eyes and ticking the reasons off on her fingers, "I'm a cop. I'm not married. I don't have any children. My hair is wild. My clothes are sloppy. I'm a slob. I don't listen to her. I spend more time at Maura's place than I do at my own. I don't eat right. I don't sleep right. I don't take care of myself. I could be setting a better example for my brothers. Did I mention that I should be married with kids and I shouldn't be a cop? Yeah, that's a big one."

Dearborn's face was kind, having shown no surprise at being snapped at. "I'm sorry if I'm repetitive, but I know you must recognize an interrogation technique when you hear it being used. I'm trying to discover if there's any new information to be learned, that's all. However, you did bring up an interesting point a moment ago. You indicated that your brother Tommy has done some things that your mother would have every right to find disappointing, yet she took it in stride."

"No, she and Pop ignored it. They kept ignoring it until he got drunk one night and hit a priest with a car. He lived, thank God, but Tommy went to jail and, even with him in jail, they both refused to see Tommy had a problem. Tommy didn't dry out until he was locked up. It was the best thing to happen to him. All of his life, he keeps making these really fu... messed up choices, and Ma and Pop just let him. Then, after he screws up royally, they take him back in. My parents are the perfect example of love being blind. But, that's Tommy, and it's different. He's the baby, and there are two boys. There's only one girl, me, and I'm not much of a girl much to my mother's continual disappointment."

"In more than one earlier session, you've talked about one or two of these matters," Dearborn remarked after a moment spent nibbling at the end of her pen, a habit of hers. "I'd like to talk about your mother's expectations versus your own. Do you agree or disagree with your mother, concerning your physical appearance, hygiene, and fashion?"

"I... I don't know. I mean, I'm fine with how I look, I guess. Well, okay, my hair bothers me a little because I never get it to do anything but be wild, but Maura tells me I look fine, and I trust her judgment. I'm pretty sure in another life she was some sort of fashion diva or something, and, I mean, I think I clean up fine. I don't cringe when I look at myself in the mirror and think, 'Oh God, no one will ever tap that.'" Long practiced at non-reaction, Dearborn nevertheless chose not to suppress a smile as Jane used the slang term. "You know what I mean? So, no... no, I don't guess I think I look bad." She shrugged, frowning as her mind continued to think about it.

"Do you want to be married?" asked Dearborn, as if the questions were related and not complete non-sequiturs. It was another habit of hers, designed to let Jane know that the questions were deliberately not leading one into the next, and that Jane's answers to one did not influence the next question. The goal was not to make Jane say certain things, nor to lead her anywhere in particular, but only to cause the questions themselves to begin to percolate in her mind.

A sharp intake of breath followed by a slow exhale preceded Jane's answer, and she answered slowly, unlike everything she had said up until this point. "I've often said that any man who loved me wouldn't want me to do this job, and I love my job. I can't marry someone who wants to change me as soon as they get me." She paused, to chew on her thumbnail, free arm wrapping around herself. "If I were really honest with myself, yeah, I'd like to marry someone one day. You know, settle down, have the 2.5... maybe even give Jo a doggie house in a backyard with a tur... stuff she likes."

Dearborn paused to make a very short note on her page, barely a completed curlicue. Her shorthand was pretty, as Jane had discovered once while trying to read the pad, but entirely undecipherable to those unfamiliar with the style. "Do you want children, now or eventually, or at all?"

"Eventually, if I found the right person, I do want children. But, if I don't and it doesn't happen, I can deal with that. I don't want to have a kid just to have one, and I don't want to bring a child into a loveless marriage. None of that is fair. I want a family, I do. But in my own time and in my own way. I mean, if it wound up that my family was just me, my dog, my partner, and... I don't know... a turtle, then that's what it is. I don't want a child unless it's the right time to have one."

"Would you say that you're disappointed with yourself for becoming a police officer? Would you have preferred another career, or is this the one you would have chosen even if you'd had a plethora of other possibilities open to you?"

"I did have choices. I was accepted to some pretty fancy colleges. I wanted to be a cop. This is who I am. This is what I do. I'm a detective, and a damned good one. I love my job; it's my life. It kills me that, deep down, my mother can't support something that's a part of me. Other people can accept it and love me for it, not in spite of it. I don't understand why she can't." Jane shook he head, hand coming up for her to chew absentmindedly on the edge of her other thumbnail. "No... no, I wouldn't change my job. I want to be here."

"What makes your mother believe you're hard to get along with? Do you agree with her? Have your close relationships been impacted by that?" Dearborn again chewed the tip of her pen, the malachite green enamel clicking quietly against her white, white teeth.

Jane took in a deep breath. "Sometimes I am. It's what makes me a good cop, but I know I can't be that bad all the time, like she makes me feel, or I wouldn't have a best friend or any friends for that matter, and I do have friends. I think she tells me that when I don't bend to whatever it is she wants me to do, which is usually go out on some random blind date she's arranged. But I do think about it. Every time I have to meet a new person or anytime I deal with Maura when she's being... _Maura,_I think about it because I don't really want to be that person. I try to not be that person just to prove Ma wrong." She shrugged. "Ma just never sees it, I guess, that I'm not as difficult as she makes me out to be."

The therapist's voice remained steady; this question was not crucial, or so her demeanor suggested. "Would you rather have been a boy than a girl? Do you think your mother would have preferred another boy?"

"No," Jane shook her head, laughing a little at the question. "No, no, no... I do not want to be a boy. I have never wanted to be a boy. Yeah, I'm a tomboy, but I'm not a man trapped in a woman's body or any of that. I mean, I have a friend who went through that, and it's … wow... I did not envy him. That's a hard life. But, he seems to be doing okay now that everything's how it should be," she blinked, mind going over those memories quickly before she came back to the present. Shaking her head to clear it she continued, "But, me? I like being a woman. Despite what Ma may say, I like being a chick, and she likes having a daughter. She just wanted a girly girl, which I never was." Jane was quiet for a thoughtful moment. "If I was a different kind of woman, Ma would be happier, but I don't think she'd be happier if I was a guy, no."

"What is it about you that makes your mother think you're too much like a boy?" Dearborn asked next, head tilted almost, but not quite, the same way Maura often tilted hers. "What is it about your style of dress that she feels is masculine? Do you agree with her?"

"What makes Ma say I act too much like I guy? Seriously? I mean, really?" In a swooping gesture, Jane ran her hand and glance down her person. "I dress in suits for work, and in t-shirts and jeans when I'm not. My date clothes aren't dresses. They're just a different type of suit. Well, they're tailored Armani suits now. Maura insisted." She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, what _doesn't_make me too much like a boy? I walk like a guy. I talk like a guy. Ma even says I think like a guy, and, I have to admit, I am pretty protective. But, maybe that's just more the cop in me? Or big sister in me? Hell, I don't know." She threw a hand up in frustration. "I like how I dress. Ma thinks I dress like a guy. I dress how I'm comfortable. Do I agree with her?" She shrugged. "Maybe a little, but I don't really think it's as bad as she says it is."

"Mm," Dearborn said, which was unusual for her, but not unheard of. She'd once claimed to dislike the nonsense syllables that most of her profession adored so much, and to prefer precise words, but sometimes she slipped and inserted that perfectly unprofessional, casual human habit into her speech. "Do you agree with what you perceive as your mother's feeling that you're too rough around the edges? What does that mean to you?"

"I'm a middle class, blue collar Italian from a family of them. I'm a product of where I come from. If I'm rough around the edges, I got it from her. But, I'm not as rough as I used to be. I had to learn a whole bunch of table and social etiquette for when I go with Maura to all those high class social functions she drags me to. I mean, I know what the difference between a shrimp fork and a salad fork is." She snorted. "I also know how to eat a fish now. Long story, don't want to talk about it. But, anyway, I think I was a little rough, but my edges are smoothing, a little. I'll always be rough. You have to be to do what I do."

Dearborn shifted again, switching from right leg crossed over left to the opposite arrangement. "Is there anything about you that is disappointing to you, but that doesn't, or wouldn't, disappoint your mother?"

"I hate that I rush to my family's aid all the time. I'll drop everything and go try to fix whatever mess they're in, and I know it hurts me to do it. I've lost boyfriends and friends because of it, and I'm pretty blown away by the fact that Maura has not only stuck it out but allowed my mother and Tommy to live in her guest house while this divorce settles and Tommy gets back on his feet. But, I hate that my family comes before everything because, sometimes, I'd like for someone else to come first. I had a boyfriend tell me I was already married to my family, so it was pointless for him to keep trying to get my attention. He was sort of right." She rubbed at her eyes. "I really hate that about myself, but Ma thinks it's great that I say how high when they yell froggie."

"If I could wave a magic wand and solve the problems between yourself and your mother, would you rather I do it by making you interested in the things that interest your mother, enjoy and want the things she wants you to enjoy and want, or would you rather I do it by changing your mother's views on your interests, wishes, and joys?"

"How about a compromise?" Jane narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms as she leaned back in the chair. "Why does it have to be so black-and-white all the time? There's always gray, right? Why can't we just meet in the middle? No," she shook her head in the negative. "My answer is neither because I wouldn't want either. I don't want to change who I am, and I don't want Ma to change who she is. I just want us to find some middle ground. Is that too much?"

"I don't think so, no. In fact, I think it's healthy," Dearborn replied, and that was something of a surprise. Seldom did she ever offer an actual opinion, especially when it was requested of her. "What do you think makes your mother believe that a man wouldn't want you? Do you want a man to want you?"

"Well, she thinks a man would be hard to get because of everything else we've just talked about," the look on Jane's face said the answer to the first question should be glaringly obvious. But, as she thought about the second question, her face shut down. "Do I want a man to want me?" She asked it again, rolling the question over in her mind. "No, I can't say that I do. I don't want anyone to want me like I'm sort of prize they managed to win. I'm not a fish to be caught, a prize to be won, or some sort of idealized woman who will happily quite my job to go home to cook, clean, and take care of the children. I don't want a man to want me. I want... I want someone to want to be with me... to be my partner... my friend... my," she frowned, "lover," she said quietly, as if that word had never left her mouth before. "Ma, she acts like she wants me to be owned. I don't want to be owned. I want to be with my equal."

Dearborn uncapped her pen with a quiet click. She hadn't taken notes for several minutes, but she did make one now, and then leaned forward in a way that suggested subtly that she was going off-script – even if the script was one she had only written during this very session. "I'd like to clarify my previous question. Do you want a _man_ to want to be with you?"

Jane startled, realizing exactly what the doctor was asking. The answer came, but it was slow. "I," she began, her voice strained, brows knit in honest thought, "I'm going to have to think about it." She cleared her throat, shifting restlessly in her chair as she glanced down at her hands, one hand's fingers running over the back of the other hand. "People, they call me all kinds of things, you know?" She glanced up, eyes shimmering ever so slightly. "There are some things that I try to not... I just... I need to think about it." Her voice was full of apology, face clearly showing her distress.

Dearborn nodded agreeably and got to her feet. "Then I think we should break for now. You need to process what we've talked about today. I'll see you again on Friday, and we'll talk more."


	14. Chapter 14

"Can we stay at my place tonight?" Jane was clearly tired as they walked to the car. "I mean, if you're wanting to keep an eye on me… Otherwise, I'm staying at home, and you can go back to your place because I've had about as much of Ma as I can stand."

"Of course," Maura agreed as she got in. Leaving one car home every other day had been a stroke of genius disguised as a gas-saving measure. In reality, it was because she knew Jane would feel obligated to remain sober if she were driving Maura or destined to be riding home with her. She also knew by now that Jane felt less lonely and in need of a drink when they were together.

Despite not being the one driving, Jane opened the driver's door as if on autopilot, waited for Maura to get in, closed it, and then climbed into the passenger's side. "That's pretty much all we talked about today, Ma I mean. And, if you ever wondered, I DO NOT think I'm a guy trapped in a girl's body."

Maura replied easily, "I never wondered. You have none of the behavioral markers that characterize those who live with gender dysphoria."

"Okay, well... yeah," with a roll of her eyes, Jane scooted down in her seat. "I'm just going to sit here and think about some stuff, while you get us home. Then I promise to help cook dinner, okay?"

* * *

><p>Another month passed by and Jane continued with her sessions. Things were starting to settle into a routine. The three weekly sessions fell to two, and Maura was there to drop her off and take her home. Once the sessions ended, they would decide what to do for dinner and where they would be spending the night.<p>

Jo had taken up residence with Angela for the time being. Whatever Maura had told her about Jane's current mental state had made the older woman back off. She seemed content to redirect her helicopter ways to taking care of the little dog, who had never been so pampered.

Tommy was doing well, too. He found a job working in the industrial district and an apartment, which everyone was proud of. Maura had given him a flat screen television as a house warming present. Jane had given him a gaming console. Frankie had given him some games. Angela had given him a warning to not stay up all night playing games and be late for work the next morning.

Jane had moments of weakness, but she never completely fell. She was doing well. She hadn't so much as been in a bar since the last incident at the Dirty Robber where Maura had come to her aid. She was feeling better. Her relationship with her mother was improving. Things were looking up until she found out about Harold Bell.

* * *

><p>"Yo, Jane, why do you look like someone shot your dog?" Frankie grabbed the empty chair next to his big sister in the precinct café.<p>

"I do not," she shot back, pushing her lunch around on her plate. "I'm just tired, that's all. Besides, what are you doing down here anyway? I thought you were working with Korsak today?"

"I am, later. I came down to grab a cup of coffee, and I saw you sitting here like a lump, so I thought I'd come see what was up. Frost says you've been mopey all day." He took a sip of his coffee.

"Mopey? Really?" She rolled her eyes. "I am not mopey. I told you. I'm just tired."

"Yeah? Whatever. So, are you and Maura staying at your place or hers tonight?" He smirked at the way the question sounded and then winced when a foot came flying at his shin.

"Neither. She's got a date tonight." With a heavy sigh, Jane picked up her Coke and sipped at it.

"Yeah? Good for her. Anyone we know?" Frankie gave a genuine smile at the thought that Maura might be seeing someone. He was starting to consider her another big sister.

"No, not really. Some big shot doctor from New York. She's been talking about him a little bit off and on. I don't think she's out to date him, though. I think she's just looking for a good fu..."

"Shut up, she's coming," Frankie's eyes grew large as he nodded toward the door.

All smiles, Maura approached the table where Jane and Frankie were seated, not quite skipping, but certainly with a spring in her step. "Good, you're here," she greeted her best friend and pretend roommate, sparing a few more smiles for Frankie and anyone else who happened to catch her eye.

"Hey, you seem happy," Jane said, smile plastered on her face.

"Yeah, excited about your date tonight?" Frankie winked at his sister only to feel another shin kick under the table.

The pathologist slid into the other empty seat. "Yes, I am! I haven't seen Harold since my time with Medicins Sans Frontiers, and I'm very much looking forward to tonight. It's been quite some time…" she trailed off, looking altogether too dreamy-eyed.

"Okay, I'm trying to eat here," Jane pointed at her food, dropped her fork, which clattered onto her plate, and made a disgusted faced. "Never mind. That did it. I'm done."

"So, what's he like that he's got you all worked up? I haven't seen you this excited since you started dating Jane's surgeon. What was his name?" Frankie asked, frowning in thought.

"Byron. Slucky." Jane made the name two separate sentences.

"Just this one time," Maura said to Frankie a little archly, though still maintaining her good mood enough to offer a wink, "I won't chastise you for drawing the most obvious conclusion. Jane, really, you should finish eating. Are you not feeling well? It's probably because of all the fat and salt in your diet, or the cola drinks you've been having lately. All that carbonation may be making you a little gassy."

"No and no." Jane stood up from the table. "I'm going to go. You just go on and talk about what's-his-face... Harold ...without me. I don't want to hear about your dates. I can't... I've got places to be." She grabbed her blazer from the back of the chair, and walked out of the café toward the elevators.

"Wow, she's crankier than usual." Frankie stated as he reached over to grab the remains of his sister's meal. "Wonder what's got her all pissy?"

"I don't know," replied Maura, forcing her breathing to remain steady, slow, and deep. It wasn't a lie. She suspected, but she did not _know_.

Frankie shrugged. "Whatever. Janie's always got something bothering her." He glanced at his watch. "I wonder where she's going, though? I mean, it's not even 2 yet, and doesn't that the elevator to the garage? Korsak said there weren't any cases right now, just some cold case stuff."

Immediately, Maura stood. "Frankie, we brought Jane's car today. I need you to give me a ride to the Robber right now."

"You... what? The Robber? Maura, did you hear me? It's not even 2 in the afternoon. Don't you think it's a little early for cocktails? Besides, I told Korsak I'd be in records with him in 10 minutes, and that was 15 ago. I'm already late." He tilted his head, considering her for a second. "Here," he fished around in his pocket. "Some things I don't want to know. I drove the Mustang today." He handed her his keys.

The caramel-haired woman snatched the keys from his hand and set out, barely remembering to call out, "I owe you, Frankie!" over her shoulder.


	15. Chapter 15

"No, sorry, Doc," said the bartender at the Dirty Robber. "Rizzoli hasn't been in here in forever. I thought she got sick or something."

* * *

><p>Jane folded and unfolded the small brown paper bag in her hand as she kept her gaze trained on the small bottle of whiskey sitting unassumingly on her coffee table. Licking her lips, she set the bag down, picked the bottle up, and walked into her kitchen. "I promised I wouldn't hurt her on purpose," she said to herself as she opened the bottle and tipped it upside down watching the amber liquid swirl around the sink and into the drain.<p>

She was still standing there with the empty bottle in her hand, hovering over the sink, when her door flew open and Maura stepped inside.

"That was dramatic," she deadpanned as she looked up from where she had been staring down at the sink.

"Rinse it out," Maura suggested softly, sadly, as she dropped her purse and key ring on the nearest available surface, "and the smell will go away. Maybe pour in a little bleach." She sighed quietly then and walked around the counter to embrace her friend. "Sweetheart, what happened? Can you tell me what the trigger was?"

Jane stiffened in Maura's embrace, slowly setting the bottle down. "No, not this time," her voice was thick with emotion. "I already called her. I've got an appointment for tomorrow. That was as soon as she could take me." Releasing the grip on the bottle, she gave Maura a gentle pat on the arm. "You should go back, Maura. I mean, you've got that... thing ...tonight, and I don't want you to miss it because of me." Her voice softened slightly as she added, "It makes you happy."

As Jane patted her arm, Maura took a step back, interpreting it as a dismissal. "No," Maura replied, sounding genuinely puzzled as to why Jane would even suggest such a thing. "No, I'm not leaving you. Not unless you sincerely want some space, which I would understand. If you'd rather I weren't here, I'll call Angela, or I'll go pick up Frankie, or whomever you like. I know you're probably sick of seeing me, but I really don't think you should be alone tonight. I'm so sorry, Jane. I don't know what's best for you right now, but I want to give it to you, whatever it is. Do you need me, or do you need me to go?"

"Come on, Maura, you know I could never get sick of seeing you." Jane sighed as she picked the bottle up to rinse it out. "And, for God's sake, don't call Ma. Look, I'll be okay. I promise. I give you my word that I will not do anything but drink a pop and go to bed tonight." She tossed the bottle in the garbage and pulled a bottle of bleach from under her sink. "I don't want to keep holding you back from doing things you want to do, and I know it's been a while since you've... done... some... stuff." She blushed. "I will be okay. I promise. Go on your," the last word left as more of a snarl than was intended, "date."

The heavy inflection on the last word did not escape Maura, nor did the tightening of the shoulder and neck muscles, the sudden prominence of one vein near Jane's temple, the tensing of the jaw. She did not respond directly, but walked over to her purse and plucked up her phone. A few virtual button-pushes later, she said in a cheerful voice, "Hello, Harold. It's Maura. Yes, well, I've been excited to see you, too. But something's come up. My best friend needs me tonight."

Pretty lips pursed as Maura listened, swaying idly from side to side. "I know, Harold. I would have enjoyed it too, but my best friend will always take precedence over a booty call. Really? Oh. Well, what would you call it? Anyway, she's my best friend and she needs me, and she's always there when I need her. Um… Well, no, Harold, I don't need you, since you had to ask."

Her swaying stopped, and caramel brows suddenly shot upward, then drew together and downward. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Harold, but as it turns out, Jane does things for me that, unlike what _you_ do for me, I _can't_do better for myself."

There was a pause, and Maura sheepishly admitted, "It's not quite as satisfying to press a virtual button as it used to be to flip a phone closed or slam it down onto the cradle."

Jane laughed aloud, shaking her head. "You didn't have to do that." She finished cleaning out the sink. "You're going to catch a cold if you keep putting off booty calls."

Attempting to remain irritated was impossible when Jane Rizzoli was laughing at her, so Maura eventually succumbed to chuckling herself. "Actually," she admitted as she headed back to Jane's side, "that's only partly true. It's not sex that stimulates production of Immunoglobulin-A. It's orgasm, and, as I just informed Harold, I'm better at giving me those than he is."

"Besides," her arms slipped around her best friend's waist, "you're better than he is at conversation, hugging, cuddling, picking movies, teaching me about sports, and you don't kick, snore, or steal the blankets. Just give me a few minutes, and I'll be fine."

"In that case, it's still only 2:30 in the afternoon. I'm going to call in for the rest of the day and then pop in _Breakfast At Tiffany's_. You're welcome to join me for cuddleage on the couch." Jane reached for her phone as she spoke, bending so as not to disturb Maura's grip on her waist. "I can't let you down after you gave up Harold's kicking and snoring for my cuddling and conversation." She snorted as she dialed the number to the station.


	16. Chapter 16

Jane walked into the familiar office of Doctor George, as she called her psychiatrist, and decided, for once, not to sit in her usual spot. Instead of the chair in the corner facing the door, she walked over to the sofa that sat in the relative middle of the room.

With a large huff of air, she pulled her gun off of her hip, carefully placed it on the coffee table in front of the sofa and in her line of sight, and then did the same for her badge and phone. Then, she plopped down, actually laying down on the sofa and using one of the armrests as a makeshift pillow.

One arm thrown over her face so the crook of her elbow covered her eyes and the other arm resting across her stomach, she let out a long groan. "I did not sleep at all last night, just so you know. I'm running on coffee, sugar, and that granola crap Maura makes me eat in the morning so I have at least one dose of fiber in my diet," she said, not bothering to move the arm flung across her face.

Dearborn indulged in a smile while Jane's eyes were covered. She liked her patient, not that it would do to insert her own feelings into a session by indicating as much. Resuming her usual expression of attentive thoughtfulness, she suggested, "Since you're so kind as to bring it up, I'd like to talk a little bit about your home situation." Though the more urgent matter of Jane's emotional dependence on alcohol seemed more pressing, the therapist preferred to address the trigger and the root of any given issue rather than the symptom. "We haven't spoken directly about Maura, but she's been a part of every discussion we've had on other topics. She's a part of your professional life, your home life, your social life, and your family life. Talk to me about her."

Jane let her arm fall from her face so that it draped over the side of the armrest and behind her head as she turned to look at the doctor. "She's my best friend, and, right now, I'm pretty glad she is because I don't think anyone besides Ma has ever been able to deal with me like Maura does. She gets me, and, when she doesn't, she asks, which is a lot different than what most people do. Before you ask, they normally just assume I'm bitchy. Maura, she asks if I'm in pain. She never assumes, and I mean _never_. It drives me nuts. I can't tell you how many times we'll be at a crime scene, and I have to figure out some way to at least get her to give me a probable cause of death. The woman is frustrating as hell sometimes."

The detective chuckled. "But, it's what makes her good at her job, you know? She's really detailed oriented. Not a lot gets passed her, so I'm not ever surprised when she figures out what's going on with me when no one else does. That's why I wasn't surprised the night she came over and poured out all my stuff. I figured she'd figure it out eventually. She always knows." She sighed. "She's smart. I mean, like genius smart. She's the smartest person I know. Sometimes she's not so street smart, but that's why I'm around." Jane smirked as her head turned so she could face the ceiling. "I keep her out of trouble."

"She's also got more money than my entire family combined, but I'm guessing you already know that. I'm pretty sure her wardrobe costs more than I'm worth, but she never flaunts it. It's just a part of who she is, and it's kind of funny when she realizes other people don't have summer houses in Paris. She gets this confused look, and… well… it doesn't matter."

Jane moved the arm across her abdomen to rest above her head with the one that had been resting across her face earlier. She stretched her lanky frame out, pulling so that the side with the scar tissue stretched. "Most people think she's cold or that she's kind of weird and freaky because of what she does and the fact she likes doing it. But she's not morbid. She doesn't get some kind of weird, sadistic kick out of it. She likes trying to put pieces together, and she sees what she does as putting together a giant jigsaw of a person's life based on how they treated themselves. She's a scientist, and she just appreciates knowledge. Yeah, she's a little quirky, but I like that about her. She's kind of like me. I act on behalf the dead to bring to justice the ones who did the awful thing. She… she speaks for the dead to provide that closure. Together, we collar the bad guys."

Jane glanced back over to the doctor, shrugging again. "Same coin, different sides."

"It sounds," replied Dearborn in between little curlicues of notes on her pad, "like a beautiful friendship." The smooth voice inserted itself into Jane's thoughts unobtrusively; she was a natural for her job, as much as Jane was a natural as a detective, built for eliciting confidences through the creation of psychological comfort caused by her maternal appearance, nurturing voice, and slow, easy mannerisms. Even when she shifted to make her round body more comfortable, it served merely to underscore the fact that comfort was paramount here for the patient as well. "You've talked about Maura often, and always it's seemed to me that you share a mutually supportive, healthy, caring relationship. But last night when you called me, there was a conflict between you." There was no direct question this time, simply a leading pause, an invitation to Jane to continue the train of thought.

"I wouldn't say conflict." Jane's face fell, eyes growing distant as she thought about the previous day. "I don't know what happened. I was eating a late lunch when Frankie came by to pester me before he went up to train with Korsak. We were talking about Maura and her date, and then she showed up." Scrunching her face up, Jane snorted. "She has a habit of doing that, showing up when I'm talking about her. It's kind of creepy now that I think about it. It's like I live in a weird dramedy or something." She shrugged. "Anyway, she showed up and started talking about Harold, and I just… I had a moment. I guess I've been spending too much time with her or something. I think I just had a selfish moment, and, instead of blowing up at her for no real reason, I took off. Problem is," Jane sat up as she spoke, centering herself on the sofa in her usual position of elbows on knees. Her eyes locked onto the items she'd placed on the coffee table earlier.

"The problem is that I found myself at the Kwik Mart buying a pint before I knew what I was doing. Then, I went home at 2 in the afternoon hell-bent on drinking it, but I didn't. I stared at it, thought about it, and had just finished pouring the whole thing down the kitchen sink when Maura comes bursting into my place like a bat out of hell." She shook her head, reaching forward to pick her badge up. She fiddled idly with it as she spoke. "She didn't ask if I'd had any. She just told me to rinse the bottle out and pour bleach down the drain, which I did. Then, she canceled on Harold, which I told her not to do, and we both called in for the day. We wound up staying on the couch all night watching Audrey Hepburn movies."

Jane glanced up, blushing. "I…um… I have thing for Audrey. Her movies, I mean. No one but Maura knows that, though. I'd catch all kinds of hell if the guys at the station knew I liked those kinds of movies." She cleared her throat, glancing back down to the badge in her hands. "Anyway, that's why I didn't get any sleep last night. We stayed up way too late, and then I had problems falling asleep when we finally went to bed. But, you know, at least I didn't drink myself stupid last night."

"Let's go back a bit," suggested 'Dr. George' as she consulted the notes she'd made while Jane's attention was turned inward, onto the previous day's experiences. "Take me back to the moments before Maura came in. Were you in a good mood before you saw Maura?"

"I was a little down. We finished a case the day before yesterday where this guy killed his girlfriend, I'll spare you the details on how, but it was pretty nasty even by my standards. She was pregnant. It was… that man's a monster. No remorse. I'm glad we collared him. He thought she was seeing someone on the side, another woman. I mean, really? They were best friends, the two women. I had to talk to the best friend. It sucked. But, anyway, that's just part of the job. Frankie said Frost said I was mopey, and I guess I sort of was. That's just part of the job, too."

"What about before you spoke with Frankie?"

She shrugged, "Like I said, I guess I was kind of mopey. Not angry or anything, just a little down. I was like that when I got up this morning. I guess it was the lack of sleep or something."

"When, exactly, did your mood shift?" Very subtly, the doctor's attention sharpened, though she kept it out of her appearance. Only her voice altered, becoming a little more quiet; it was Dearborn's way of drawing out further information while retreating in importance, herself, from the patient's awareness.

"When Frankie brought up Byron Slucky." At the psychiatrist's head tilt, Jane answered, "He was the surgeon that put me back together after I shot myself. He and Maura had a fling for a little bit, but he called her 'just a pathologist' one day, and she called him arrogant and then called it off. Good thing, too. The guy was an ass." She looked up from her badge, tossing it on the table next to her phone and just missing the end of the holster to her gun. "Don't ever use the royal we with me. I'm pretty sure, if I hear that again, I'm going to flip and pound someone into a pulp. The guy's bedside manners were worse than Maura's turtle… tortoise. Whatever. He sucked."

"Maura has a tortoise?" Dearborn asked in surprise. This was the first she'd heard of that. As Jane spoke, she stood up and walked over to her oak filing. "Keep talking, don't mind me." Dearborn drew out the file that Jane had seen before, with her own name printed clearly on the tab, and came back to resume her seat.

Jane shrugged and continued on, her voice taking on a mocking tone as she ran through a list of Bryon-like questions. "How are We today?' 'How are We feeling today?' 'How is Our wound today?' God," she rolled her eyes, "I want to vomit just thinking about him."

"Byron sounds like someone who would have gotten under your skin quite a bit, even if he weren't dating your best friend. Come to think of it," the comment sounded off-hand, but knowing she was a psychiatrist in the middle of a session, it probably wasn't, "from what you've told me, Maura must have fairly low standards in men. Have you liked any of her dates or boyfriends?"

"Hey," Jane snapped, posture going from slumped to ramrod straight as her eyes narrowed at the doctor, "Maura has great taste in men." Scowling, she began to speak, then stopped, then started again. This time, she was less harsh. "Okay, well, to be fair, Maura has a habit of finding fault with just about every guy she dates. She winds up diagnosing some sort of medical problem with them, and then she won't go out for a second date, and, besides Dr. Schmuck, the last few guys she's gone on a date with have been more so she could let off a little steam than because she was looking for a boyfriend." Jane shook her head, waving a hand dismissively in the air. "Yeah, they were SO not dating material. Even Maura said so."

As she quietly perused a previous page of notes, the doctor grew thoughtful. Dearborn's thoughtfulness came in several flavors; this one was intrigued. However, she did not address whatever she found in the notes, or so it seemed to Jane, staying on point. "What was wrong with the last… let's say anyone past Slucky? Not according to Maura, since she finds fault with them, but according to you?"

"That would be," leaning back into the sofa, Jane rolled her eyes up in though, "Giovanni. Oh man, I told her not to bother. She should have listened to me. I've known him since we were kids, and he's a mess. I mean, he's a nice guy, but, okay, see, what had happened was," Jane started the story with an odd conversational style that she rarely used when talking to Doctor George. "During The Week from Sailor Hell, Ma's car broke down while Maura, Ma, and I were coming back from brunch, and we had it pushed to this place we always used. It's owned by Giovanni's pop, but he was the one there. Maura drooled about him because he, apparently, has a large… well, you know. At least, according to Maura based on the size of his fingers."

Rolling her eyes, Jane smirked at the memory. "Anyway, she invites Giovanni over for dinner, right? And he turns down a dinner that probably cost more than his entire month's salary, and … THEN," she began to chuckle, "he tells her he wants to lick her face." She snorted. "Maura doesn't sleep with him, which was all she wanted to do anyway, but he keeps trying to get back with her. He won't take a hint, and we wind up making him think we're more-than-friends so he'll leave her alone." She actually laughed out loud. "What was the term we used? Oh yeah… yeah… 'LLBFF's' Life Long Best Friends Forever. Oh God, you should have _seen_ his face. Idiot. He actually offered up a threesome." She gave a little shudder. "Anyway, I don't know why she bothered with him. He's just this middle class, blue collar Italian guy with a tiny brain and a big mouth. He's a grease monkey! Not Maura material, not even just for sex. I think she was desperate… or crazed."

Smirk still firmly planted on her face, Jane reached forward to pick up her piece, idly checking the safety before setting it back down again and picking up her badge to fiddle with again. "Basically, he's an idiot, and Maura could do better than that even for a one night stand. He was too stupid to even figure out all she wanted was to screw him. I mean, really?" She rolled her eyes. "Idiot."

Dearborn's eyes followed Jane's hands to her gun. "I see," she said with a kind of exaggerated non-emphasis. She did not appear nervous of the weapon, but still showed visible interest and made a very small squiggle on her notepad. "This Giovanni has certain things in common with you, doesn't he? Italian, working class, good with his hands but not always with his words. However, in your assessment he lacks your intelligence, your sophistication, and your erudition." Dearborn knew by now that Jane's vocabulary was wider than what her speech led one to believe.

"I take it that the face-licking was also a factor in her decision to abandon the idea of having relations with him. Still," the plump woman continued, "it must be upsetting, watching a good friend choose someone so similar to you, with whom she's quite compatible on so many levels, yet lacking in the very things that probably enable your friendship to exist and thrive in the first place. Someone beneath her, in the ways that you aren't."

With a shrug, Jane leaned back again as she ran a finger over her badge. "She said kind of the same thing when I told her he was a middle class, blue collar Italian. She said so was I, and I told her that was true, but I was interesting, unlike grease monkey boy. But," she glanced up to the plump woman seated across from her, "I also pointed out that she didn't want to sleep with me, and she agreed and told me that was all she wanted to do with Giovanni, which I guess makes sense if you put all the pieces together." Jane's face pulled into a thoughtful expression. "When we went undercover at that lesbian bar, she told me I wasn't her type. So, if Giovanni is a lot like me, then of course all she'd want to do is use him for sex. She wouldn't be interested in having a relationship with him because she wouldn't be interested in having a relationship with me… if we were into that sort of thing."

Jane dropped her hands, badge an all, into her lap. "You know, Maura and I have some messed up conversations?" She chuckled. "She said, 'I wonder what kind of women we would like if we liked women?' and I told her I would be the guy, and she asked me how I knew, and the next thing I know she's telling me I'm not her type because I don't know how to relax and I sleep with my shoes on." She chuckled, smirking and shaking her head. "That's about as funny as the time I was at her place hiding from one of Hoyt's apprentices, and, when she laid down next to me on the guest bed to keep me company, I asked her something like, 'Are we having a sleep over or is this your way of telling me you're attracted to me?"

The smirk on her face finally reached her eyes, "That was also the first night I was ever at her place, and when I met Bass, the tortoise." Her face began to brighten. "I call him a turtle on principle. Ticks her off every time. I'm pretty sure it's a reflex action to correct me on it now. It's great. Pavlov's dogs great." The smirk turned into an actual smile. "It's so easy with her."

Several times during Jane's musings, Dearborn had made notes rather than interrupting, and was now glad that she had done so. She would have steered the patient in other directions, very likely at the expense of learning all that she had just learned. Nevertheless, she elected to go back to a highly salient point. "What I'm hearing is that Maura wants you for everything that Giovanni isn't," she distilled it down to its essence, "and Giovanni for the one thing that you don't give her. Would you call that an accurate paraphrase of your thought process?"

"I," Jane's mouth gaped like a fish out of water for a time. "Um… what? Maura and I… wait a minute. George, you've got the wrong idea here. Maura and I are just friends. Best friends, but just friends. I can't 'provide' her with anything like what Giovanni could have, if what you're saying is what I think you're saying. I mean, he's a… he's a guy, and I'm not, and Maura," the detective's face took on a '_well duh'_ expression for a brief moment, "is all over that. Trust me. I've heard her talk enough about male specimens to know exactly what she'd prefer in her bed." Taking in a deep breath, Jane leaned back on the sofa until she was able to clip the badge back onto her belt in its usual spot. "I try to be a good friend, though, so I think I give her everything I'm able when, you know, I'm not drinking my world away."

Conscious of the inherent comedy of uttering such a phrase, Dearborn nevertheless asked, "How do you feel about that?"

"About what? Drinking my world away? Come on, Doc, I think you already know that answer." Jane rolled her eyes.

"About the idea," clarified the doctor, "that Maura goes elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. All the while, by your own words over these many weeks, both of you seem to consider one another to be your primary relationship."

"But, Maura and I aren't gay, so why would it bother me if she was seeing a guy? That's… that's stupid. If Maura isn't interested in me in _that_ way, then of course I want her to go find someone she is interested in in that way so she can be happy… or cold free anyway," she said on an aside. "Anyway, I'm not gay either, so that does sort of limit the whole 'sleeping with Maura' idea, doesn't it? You know, you're not the first person to suggest that we have a thing for each other." Frowning deeply, Jane crossed her arms in front of her as she crossed her legs at the knee. "The whole precinct thinks we're sleeping together."

Dearborn shook her head patiently. "I apologize for miscommunicating," she said as if it were unintentional. "There are simply a great many areas of life in which the two of you provide for one another, and the one area in which you don't might stand out to you in some way, regardless of the nature of that one area." She shifted, pulling discreetly at the waistband of her trousers, which were a little on the snug side. "But I do notice that when you speak of this, you tell me that Maura isn't interested in you, that she needs a man or men to provide for her in this way. I want you to know that I do consider your assessments valuable," which was not the same thing as accurate, "but they would help me a little more if Maura was my patient. My primary interest is in _your_ needs, fears, wishes, and thoughts. What do you feel? What do you want? How do you feel about what you perceive as her needs?"

"How _I_ feel about _her_ needs? That's a weird question to ask. I want her to be happy." Jane gave a frustrated sigh. "Maybe Maura _should_ be your patient," the thought, though an honest one, was laced thickly with sarcasm. "She's my friend. I want her to be happy and healthy and all that other good stuff that you want for people you care about. I mean, what else is there to say?"

Dearborn waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The increasingly odd thing was, she wasn't fidgeting. There was no nibbling of her pen, no shifting of bulk in her chair, no pull at too-tight waistband. No throat clearing, no idle examination of her fingernails. Not even an eyebrow lift. Those little habits of hers might just as well have been highlighted in neon colors, with arrows pointing and signs flashing, for the obviousness of the fact that they were, in fact, theater. She was still as a statue, simply waiting and listening with all her might and main.

Jane sat just as impassively, meeting the doctor's gaze. Her face was just as impassive, her detective's mask sliding coolly overly her features as her body fell into what most might perceive as a relaxed but alert state. "Do you have another question?" The inquiry was quiet, non-threatening, and easy as it fell from Jane's lips. It was a practiced ease, one that came from years of interrogating suspects.

Dearborn chuckled despite herself. "No, _Detective,_ not at the moment. You go ahead and stand down. I'd rather speak with Jane, the woman who came in here full of courage, wanting to understand herself better." She even permitted herself a wink, shifting again and drawing her pen back up to her lips. Now again it was natural; the stillness had been the trick, after all. "All right. Let me go a little slower and press a little softer. I can tell you're a little bit raw and sore there, and I'm not trying to make you bleed. Let's both take a little break. Want some water? I sure do."

Once she had fetched two glasses of water and two straws from the sideboard behind her desk, the doctor brought them back, sipping from the one she claimed as her own. "There you go. Something to hold in your hand and play with, besides that gun."

"I only picked it up once to check the safety," Jane grumbled as she took the offered glass but not the straw. "I don't carry it with me everywhere, you know. I have it with me here because I'm on call a lot. The weeks I come in without it is when Frost and Korsak are on call." She tilted her head, eyes on the piece sitting on the table. "I forget it makes people nervous. To me, it's a tool and something to be respected, but I think the only person besides the other cops in my life that's not nervous around my gun is Maura." She shook her head, moving to set the glass down on the coffee table, but stopped abruptly. She looked confused for a moment. "You don't have any coasters?"

Dearborn rose again to fetch two from the sideboard, though she noted as she sat and tossed them down a little like playing cards, "Actually, the table's pretty well waterproof. But it does make the glasses clink less if we use these. Don't worry about me with your gun, though, Jane. I've been shot by a patient before, so I'm real good at knowing what that looks like on a person's face. You're not wearing a shooting face. You just feel like that gun is a part of who you are, like your badge. You play with that sometimes, too. I'm not worried about you firing that thing at me." The revelation was an oddity, the first actual piece of personal information the therapist had given. It showed a measure of trust, possibly fondness, but likely was offered purely for the practical reason of explaining why she was amused or neutral, rather than nervous, whenever Jane's idle movements included handling her weapon.

"So," she added after a brief pause, "do you feel able to address that point? I don't want to push this if you're not ready just yet, but I do feel it will be important sooner or later. Sooner, rather than later, in fact."

Jane sat her glass carefully down on the coaster, stood, picked up her gun and phone, and clipped them back into place. She paced in the small space between the sofa and coffee table for a bit before turning abruptly around to the face the other woman. Face hard, eyes determined, she answered quickly, as if ripping off a band aide. "Yes, I have feelings for Maura, but I've never had it for another woman, and I figure it's just a fluke because I spend so much time with her. I can't be gay. Ma would shit a brick."

Once said, Jane resumed her pacing, hands on hips and eyes darting rapidly around the room. "There, I said it."

"There, you said it," Dearborn agreed with something approaching pride, though she strove to erase it from her tone. "How did that feel?"

"Worse than every single time I've ever had to deal with Hoyt," came the response as Jane continued to pace. "This can't happen. She's not interested in me. We're not gay, and Ma… our work… oh my God. This just cannot happen."

"You're still saying 'we'," the doctor noted. "Tell me what _you_ feel. What do you want, if there were no obstacles like your mother, your job, or anything else?

In a frenzied and panicked state, Jane turned on her heels toward the doctor. Eyes wide, breathing quickening, she answered without thinking, "Maura." She stopped moving entirely for a brief moment, a deer caught in headlights. "Oh God," she mumbled to herself as she slowly sat back down on the sofa. "Fuck."

"Believe it or not," Dearborn said quietly as she reached for the box of tissues to slide it within Jane's reach, "the fear you're experiencing right now is the worst part. For the record, I won't be pushing you to say you're gay. I don't know if it really even matters whether you identify yourself as gay, straight, bisexual, fluid, or if you identify yourself at all. I may have to write down jargon in files, just in case you need a therapist besides me someday who will find it useful, but I'm really not big on labels.

"My whole trip," said the woman born in time to remember the sixties, "is helping you figure out whatever is inside you, what you want to do with it, and how to be at peace while doing your thing." Tossed-away words. They were all true, all no doubt helpful, but Dearborn was well aware that the important thing wasn't what she said, but that Jane keep hearing her steady, calm voice as an undercurrent to the turmoil she was experiencing inside. Words to keep Jane grounded, give her something to grasp when she was ready to come up for air in the world outside her own head.

Shell shocked, Jane blinked at the offered tissue but didn't move to take them. "What do I do now?" She cleared her throat, eyes slowly blinking. "What do I tell Maura?" Fear passed over her face. "I can't… no, that wouldn't be right but… if I tell her," she was talking aloud, giving voice to her thoughts, "and she's not on the same page… what if I lose her? I can't lose her. I don't think I would deal well with that. I mean, she's practically my… oh man… shit," the detective ran a shaking hand through her hair. "What the fuck am I going to do with this?"

"That's up to you." The scariest words Dr. Dearborn ever uttered. She said them often, knowing full well that placing both power and responsibility in the hands of anyone, especially over themselves, both exhilarated and terrified. "We're only about ten minutes from the end of the time I have today, but since you have an appointment on Thursday, why don't we bring this up then? Just take a few minutes to drink some water and breathe a little. Relax if you can. I know Maura's waiting out there for you, and you might as well calm on down before you go out there to her."

Jane laughed a scared and panicked little laugh. "Oh God," she picked up the glass of water and took a few shaky breathes before taking a sip. "I'll never be able to hide this from her. She knows me too well. She'll know something is up. By our next session, I'd bet good money that she'll have managed to get me to say whatever it is bothering me, and," she set the empty glass down, "I can't… can I just climb out your back window?"

Dearborn allowed herself to chuckle lightly. "I'm afraid they don't open without setting off an alarm. But maybe this is a good thing, that she's so perceptive. She'll see that something is unusual with you, but she knows better than to ask you questions. Maura, from what I remember at the conference, is a great respecter of doctor-patient confidentiality, even if she's never had to practice it herself." She set her own drinking glass and coaster on her table, leaving Jane's for the moment.

"Tell you what, though," the round-bodied woman went on as she stood to take her notes back to her desk, where she would later flesh them out and add them to her personal observations in Jane's file. "You're making such good progress, and you've been so brave lately. This one time, you're showing me real fear, and not just annoyance or sadness, so I think this might be 'the big one'. That's a technical term, you know," she deadpanned, "but don't let it intimidate you. I'm just thinking that there might be a way for you to feel safer talking about this."

The therapist's next question, she approached with some apprehension. If she was asking it too soon, it could cause her patient to become skittish for several more sessions to follow, and there might not be another chance. "Would you allow me to extend an invitation to Maura to sit in on your next session? I won't bring up this subject directly if you would prefer that we keep it confidential for now. I'd like to question her for a change, since even apart from today's information, she seems to be the biggest person in your life, and the one who knows you the best."

Jane said nothing. Instead, she held one finger up, as she pulled her cell phone from her belt, and shot off a quick text message. A quick second passed, and the sound of Chopin's _Funeral March_ echoed in the space. "She'll probably knock first." She turned expectantly toward the door.

_Knock, knock, knock._

Dearborn seemed surprised, but got up to let Maura in rather than calling out to her. "Come on in, Maura. Like to take a seat while Jane tells you what we have in mind?"

Maura's head tipped towards the right as her features took on an endearing level of puzzlement. "Jane?"

Jane stood up awkwardly, running her palms down the sides of her legs. "Yeah, so, listen, Doctor George and I were wondering if, maybe… um," Jane winced as she looked between the two doctors. She gave herself both a mental and physical shakedown. "Maura, would you be willing to come with me to the next session? You know, actually be a part of it? It would… it would be helpful." She began to run her hands over each other as she waited for Maura to answer.

Surprise ghosted and settled over both doctors' faces, though it remained longer on Dearborn's. Maura's metamorphosed fairly quickly to acceptance, a gentle smile, as she slipped one hand over Jane's, stilling its nervous movement. "Of course I will," she said without having to think about it at all; but then she did pause, giving herself the opportunity just to look at Jane, to study the set of her features. To her, and also for the psychiatrist's benefit, she added with finality, "Anything you need, sweetie, you know I'll do. Always."

Dearborn reached discreetly for her inner sleeve, where she had long ago learned to keep tissues. Usually she offered them to others. At the moment, she needed it herself, though in the interest of keeping that wall of professionalism intact, she played up the 'something in my eye' trick.

She had met Maura at a conference, spoken to her only a little, and had not gotten to know the pathologist at all. When the woman contacted her regarding a professional referral, she had spoken simply of an acquaintance who had undergone multiple traumas and had sought to distance herself from them with the numbing powers of alcohol.

Visit after visit, two to three a week for a month and a half now, Dearborn had seen Maura in the waiting room, bringing Jane in with a smile or a heartfelt hug. After each session, she walked Jane out and Maura would close her laptop, smile again, and offer her hand or arm to take them both back out again. A few visits, she knew, made Maura a good friend, even if her name had never entered Jane's mouth at all during a session. But every single visit? This was going above and beyond the call of duty. Agreeing without hesitation to actually take part in a session? No one did that. Ever. Everyone hesitated, unless they were simply too unintelligent or too inexperienced to realize that they, too, would be questioned, rather than just listening in on the woes of their family member. Everyone hesitated.

Except, apparently, Maura, who should certainly be aware of what would happen.

Perhaps Jane didn't really have the full story on her best friend's feelings.

Jane let out a relieved breath. "Really?" At Maura's simple nod, the detective gave a small smile. "Thank you." She allowed Maura to take hold of her left hand as she shifted her gaze to the psychiatrist. "So, it's all set then?"

"All set," Dearborn replied. "See you both on Thursday."


	17. Chapter 17

At the car, Jane handed her keys to Maura. "I think you should drive," she said as she walked around to the passenger's side after opening the driver's side door. "I'm beat. That one, it was a little hard. Listen, can we," she slid down in the passenger's seat after buckling herself in, "go see a movie? Something funny? Maybe, after that we could go to Catalia's and grab a slice? My treat. I just… I need to pretend that everything's still normal for a little bit, I think."

Maura likewise buckled in, then reached over to give Jane's hand a squeeze. "I'd like that a lot," she said with a smile, and drove them there. Her right hand departed Jane's only for shifting gears.

* * *

><p>As they settled down in Jane's bed for the night, the detective shifted restlessly from side to side. The movie had been a good idea. She was with Maura without having to really say anything to her or look her in the eye. Pizza had been harder. Jane couldn't seem to stop the awkward silences that slipped into their normally easy flowing conversations, and she kept jumping whenever Maura made any type of physical contact with her.<p>

Now, as they were trying to go to sleep, Jane found that all she could think of was holding Maura. She had, thus far, managed to keep that particular daydream at bay, but, once you open up a floodgate, it is difficult if not impossible to shut again. Her mind was filled with all the things she would to do and be for Maura, and both her mind and body were full of frustration at not being able to do any of it.

The warmth radiating from Maura's side of the bed was welcoming, and it took everything Jane had to not reach out to pull the smaller woman to her. Her hands practically itched to touch the other woman, and she kept having to remind herself to stop staring at the back of the honey-brunette's head.

She was seriously considering moving to the sofa. The next session was the following day after work, and she really needed to get some sleep.

* * *

><p>Maura often sighed in her sleep, so a deeper inhalation was not all that unusual. Unusual was when the long, smooth exhalation was replaced by her voice. "Come on, then," Maura spoke groggily, drowsily, rolling halfway towards Jane and reaching her hand backward towards her friend. "What are you waiting for?"<p>

"Whu?" The nonsense question escaped Jane's mouth as her eyes bugged out a bit.

Sleepy chuckling was the response. "Come here, Jane." When again her best friend didn't move, Maura rolled a little further. "What, you don't want to be the big spoon? I can be the big spoon."

"I… big spoon?" The question was weak by any standard applied. Uncertainty written in her movements, Jane scooted a bit closer and cautiously laid her hand on Maura's waist in what she considered to be a safe spot. After a moment of fidgeting, she managed to slide her other arm under her pillow and up along the headboard without touching or disrupting Maura.

Maura sighed in contentment as she snuggled back into muscular, soft warmth, lacing her fingers through the thinner, longer ones of her best friend. Idly her thumbpad stroked along Jane's in a somewhat misguided attempt to sooth and relax her. "You're the one who taught me what that was," she reminded her with a quiet laugh. "Better?"

"I did?" Jane sighed, relaxing into the feel of Maura's frame nestling against her own. "I don't think I knew that," she said as she allowed the doctor to pull their intertwined hands down so that Jane's arm encircled Maura's waist. "Or maybe I did and just forgot. I've slept some since then. Not much, but some," she chuckled as she shifted so that her other arm ran along the headboard and over Maura's head. Idly, she took hold of Maura's other hand. "But, yeah, better… thanks."

A long silence later, both their breathing had calmed, becoming slow and shallow. When Jane had every right to believe Maura was asleep, Maura inhaled a little more deeply and said, "How are you?" in a way, and frankly in a setting, that made it an entirely un-casual, non-throw-away question, the opposite of its usual function.

"Been better, been a lot worse. Mostly just… scared," came the quiet and unsurprised answer.

"Of tomorrow?" Maura wondered, and then as she so often asked of late, "Is there anything I can do to make it easier?"

"Yeah, tomorrow's pretty scary. Today's session was scarier, and I don't know what you could do, Maura. You do too much already. I wouldn't even know where to start to even tell you… anything." Jane moved closer, nudging her face a bit closer to the back of Maura's neck. "I know you hate it when I start sentences like this, but what if you don't like what we talk about tomorrow? What if you decide it's too much and you can't deal with it… with me anymore?"

The smaller woman rolled over, spine snaking a little as she moved onto her back and then her other side and slung her upper leg over Jane's bent ones to keep her lanky friend in place. "Will you be saying things that are important to you? Things about yourself?" she asked, eyes dark with the lack of lighting, but fixed on the place where she knew Jane's must be.

Jane tried to move, but Maura's strength kept her in place. "Yeah… yeah, I will. Not sure I'm ready to, but I don't think I can keep it to myself forever. I kind of wish," she grunted, "I mean, I like Doctor George; I trust her, but there's just some stuff that's easier to say in the dark."

"Well," Maura contemplated aloud, "it's dark right now." She freed one arm from beneath the pillow and sought out some part of Jane, as if her hands felt just that little bit wrong if Jane was nearby and she wasn't touching her. "But Jane, no matter how bright it was, I really hope you know that I'm never going to judge you harshly. You're my best friend. If there's something that's important to you, then it's important to me. If it's inside you, then it's important to me, and I love it because it's part of you."

Moving the arm against the headboard so that Maura's could reach it, Jane asked quietly. "Do you love me, Maura?"

"So much," came the soft murmur in the darkness.

"Would you still feel that way if I told you that I… Maura, you always know. I never have to tell you anything. You always just sort of know." Jane quieted for a moment. "Do you know?"

There was quiet. The shadow-shapes of the two women's faces gained slight definition in the faint sliver of moonlight that worked its way through the bedroom window curtain, but only in outline, never in detail – black and blacker. "I know that you have something that's weighing on you, that you haven't felt safe telling me." Maura's voice was accepting, not judging; she didn't seem to hurt at being left out, and she even explained why, taking away the momentary mystery of it. "Sometimes it's hardest to say the really important things to the people who matter the most, like your family, or your closest friends. You'll tell me when, and if, you feel safe. That's all I need to know, unless you want me to know more."

Thinking on what she'd just been told, Jane gave an exasperated grunt as she turned and rolled out of bed. She quietly made her way to the living room and was digging around on the bookshelf when she heard Maura behind her. Without a word, she pulled a small binder from the shelf and walked back into the bedroom.

She settled, propped in the bed with the side lamp on. Once Maura was settled next to her again, Jane opened the binder to reveal it held pictures of obvious relatives. She flipped through the book until she came across the picture of a man in his early teens. "Cousin Ray. He and his husband have been married for 8 years now. This picture was taken about 4 years before they met." She continued to flip. "That's my great aunt, Clare. She had a lifelong roommate, Nell. They're buried together." She flipped a few more pages. "That's my third cousin, Steve. He and Andrew just sent out invitations to their commitment ceremony a couple of weeks ago. They live in the South, no marriage rights down there."

She finished off by opening the last page with photos. It was a picture of the Rizzoli family from the previous year. Everyone was smiling, and she smiled at the memory of when the photo was taking. She pointed to herself in the photograph. "They say that it's hereditary, you know? I mean, I've heard the arguments both ways, but I just can't think of a reason why anyone would wake up one day and be like, 'Yeah, I want to make my life more difficult by being attracted to the same sex. Sounds like fun.' It just doesn't make sense." She ran her finger across the picture. "Maura," she turned to face the medical examiner. "I'll never be ready to say this, but you should know… I… I'm… it's just that you," she tapped the picture idly with her finger before closing the notebook and setting it down on the nightstand beside her and turning back to the other woman. "I'm attracted to you Maura, and it's more than intellectual, but that's a lot of it. It's… everything really." She looked down at her hands where they were folded in her lap, chewing a little on her bottom lip as she waited for whatever was going to come next.

Maura had paid attention to each photograph, stroking them through the plastic covers with one finger, or drawing the binder closer to her face to get a better look. When the binder went away, she scooted nearer, so near that she could uncross her legs and wrap them around Jane's tightly-huddled body, followed immediately by her arms. "Oh, Jane," she sighed, her voice cloudy with emotion, when Jane fell silent. "My sweet friend. I almost don't even want to answer that, because I don't want to overshadow how much I admire you right now. You are so brave, my sweet, sweet Jane."

"Really?" Jane gave a chuckle, not moving, not looking up. "Because, right now, I'm feeling pretty freaking terrified. Not really feeling the brave here, Maura. But, I'm glad you're still okay touching me." She gave a quick glance up before looking back down at her hands.

A huff of air, not quite grown-up enough to call a real laugh, stirred the hair by Jane's neck. "I'll never be not okay touching you," she promised with a smile, one which rounded the cheek resting on Jane's shoulder. "I'm okay with you touching me, too. Nothing has changed, except that you've told me, so now I'm… I have permission to know what I only believed before."

"Figures you would already know. You _always_ know," Jane grumbled as she motioned for Maura to untangle from her. Once there were apart, Jane looked at the other woman for a very long moment before speaking. "I need you to throw me a bone here. I'd feel a little better about all of this if you'd tell me if I even have a shot. I think, with Doc George's help, I can probably work through not having a shot. I mean, I'm not going to relapse, but it'd just be helpful if you'd tell me no now so I can move on."

Another huff, this time of mild frustration. "For pity's sake," Maura said when the dark-haired woman had finished talking herself into believing the futility of her desire, "You're a detective. You've had the perfect suspect sitting right in front of you, incapable of lying. You even asked me yourself a few minutes ago if I loved you. Weren't you paying attention when I answered? No, Jane, you don't have a shot. You have me. I've been… I've been trying to avoid telling you that, especially once I knew how much you were hurting, because I didn't want to disrupt your recovery process."

Jane laughed. It started as a nervous giggle that fell quickly into genuine laughter. She even gave a little snort. "This is classically us, Maura. I can't even," she gave another laughing snort. "You don't want to tell me because you're afraid I'll do something stupid. I don't want to tell you because I'm afraid you'll hate me." She tried to simmer down, taking in a few calming breaths. "God, what a pair." Eyes still sparkling with amusement, she leaned back against her headboard. "Hug?" She offered by way of raising the arm closest to Maura up. "Better yet, snuggle?"

"Give me a sec?" Maura suggested, getting up instead of lying down with Jane. However, she was only up long enough to put away the binder and to turn out the light. Once she found the bed again and got into it, things were much better.


	18. Chapter 18

"Maura, you don't have to do this. I mean, it's not too late to change your mind," Jane said as they walked toward the receptionist's desk to sign in. "I know you said yes, but, you know, this isn't your therapy session, and you know she'll probably ask you all kinds of stuff you probably don't want to answer."

Maura listened closely, lowering her voice to match Jane's extra-quiet volume. "Sweetheart," she said, standing so near that the two could have shared the same sweater, "your doctor is free to ask me anything she wants, and I will answer her as fully and completely as I can. I want to be here. This is such a small part of what I would do to help you. Let me."

She then simply turned away and signed both their names on the check-in list, greeting the receptionist she'd come to know over the last several weeks. A few pleasantries later, she was just about to resume _the don't be silly, I want to be here conversation_with Jane, when Dr. Georgia Dearborn opened her office door and beckoned to them both with a smile.

Once inside, Maura deposited her purse and light autumn jacket on the coat rack, a new addition that had been in the office since the first cool day in September. "Hello again, Georgia," she said with a smile as she took Jane's blazer, then held out her hand for the gun, badge, and cellphone, just as she sometimes offered to secure them when the pair of them arrived home from work. Having only been here once before, she didn't realize that Jane habitually kept those on the table nearby.

Dr. Dearborn watched impassively, wondering whether Jane would hand them over out of what appeared to be habit, or would keep them on the table in front of her usual seat, within reach.

Without thought or consideration, Jane plucked everything from her belt. First she handed over her badge, then cell phone, and finally her gun after double-checking the safety. "Couch?" She looked to Maura to see if she was okay with that.

Maura nodded, tucked the accoutrements of police work away in the inner confines of her purse, then joined Jane on the sofa.

Dr. Dearborn looked, in her understated way, very nearly flummoxed.

However, as a professional, she let it go and offered smiles, glasses of water, and then took her seat when all was situated. "Well, it's good to see you both," she said, for a moment sounding strangely Southern and Canadian all at once. "Maura, thank you especially for joining Jane today. I imagine your input will be very valuable."

"I hope so," answered the smaller woman as her hand snuck towards Jane's. "I know that I already agreed to this, but I'd like to reiterate that absolutely anything you need in order to help Jane, I'm prepared to do. Carte blanche. No boundaries."

Jane allowed her hand to be captured, leaning aback against the sofa while her free hand idly straightened her shirt's collar. "I promise I'll try to not crawl under the table, but that's the best you two get from me." She glanced over to the pathologist, a small smirk on her face.

Dr. Dearborn smiled at both women. "Good to know. Perhaps I should start by asking you, Maura, if you've noticed things since Jane has been coming to me, things that worry you or things that seem like positive changes?"

"Both," Maura replied to the doctor, while looking at Jane. "As you know, Tuesday was a low point for Jane. I was… I did something that I thought would protect her, and it hurt her instead. Or, well, I made plans to do it. I didn't go through with them. I couldn't, once I realized." She gave Jane's fingers a squeeze as she turned back towards Dearborn. "But actually, I think that was a good thing. Not the hurt, but the fact that Jane responded the way she did. She wanted a drink, thought about it, bought alcohol, and then poured it right out without a taste. I know because I didn't smell it on her breath when I came closer."

The doctor's pen described a tiny curlicue on the fresh page of her legal pad. "You didn't ask because you had evidence," she said, or perhaps asked.

Maura's caramel curls jostled one another as she shook her head. "No, I didn't ask because I could tell by her facial microexpressions. They did not indicate shame or regret. I didn't purposefully smell Jane's breath; I was just there, and inhaling, so I noticed the lack of whiskey fragrance. She smelled like ham on whole wheat, no mustard, extra lettuce and tomato."

Jane said nothing, but gave a snort of amusement at Maura's precise knowledge of her lunch that day.

"What else did you notice about her response, if anything?"

Taking her time, Maura thought over the incident, picking out what she felt were the most significant things. "I noticed that she felt better when I canceled my date. I think a lot of people would have let it go at that, once the immediate danger of succumbing to an addiction craving was passed and once their mood had improved, but Jane didn't do that. She sought extra help because she knew she needed it. Jane made me very proud, and very relieved, when she called you. It made me feel very hopeful for her."

Dr. Dearborn gave a small smile of acknowledgement before asking Jane, "That was the first time you'd needed an extra session. The two weeks prior to that, you were also down to two weekly sessions instead of three. Do you feel you'd like to go back up to three for a while, for a little more steady support, or would you feel up to sticking it out with two for now?"

"No, I'm good with two. I have plenty of support; I just had a bad moment." Frowning and with a look of guilt on her face, she kept her eyes trained on her free hand as it fiddled with the buttons along the front of her shirt. "I want to learn to deal with stuff on my own. I think I can do it. I mean, before the shooting, I was pretty okay with doing stuff alone." She glanced up to the plump woman sitting in the chair beside the sofa. "Used to it, being alone, I mean. I need to at least be able to handle something by myself when stuff happens that I don't like instead of throwing a fit like a…a," she shot a side glance to Maura, "A squirmy 3 year old." Eyes falling back down to the coffee table where the water glasses were, she couldn't help the smirk that crept across her face.

Quiet laughter acknowledged the inside joke, though Maura kept looking at Jane too much to be bothered explaining it to Dr. Dearborn. Fortunately, the good doctor wasn't asking; she was preoccupied counting the number of times Maura attempted to look at Jane's eyes but missed and let the gaze hit her lips instead. These patients were fun.

Enough of that. The doctor swirled another shorthand note for herself before going on. "You mention support, Jane. Maura, do you perceive Jane as having a strong support structure of friends and family? I've heard Jane's thoughts on this, so please just tell me yours."

"Stronger than I think she realizes," Maura replied instantly. "There are so many people who genuinely care for Jane. Good, good people that she's cultivated almost unintentionally, I believe. She is always doing someone a liquid—"

"Solid, babe." Jane rolled her eyes, smiling at Maura's missed colloquialism.

"Whatever. She does favors," Maura continued, "without asking to have them returned, usually without being asked. She gives people the information they need, but don't know to request, and she's given rides, invited people over for meals when they're alone on holidays or have just been divorced or widowed. That adds up. A lot of people feel fondness for Jane, and not just obligation. Then there are her family. Not one Rizzoli that I've ever met knows how to mind his or her own business, but they pry for the best of reasons. They're genuinely interested in one another's welfare. They want to know what's happening so they know how to help and support one another. I think it's sweet. Jane may find it annoying, but deep down, I think she knows that whenever she should choose to activate it, or need it badly enough to be unable to ask for help, they'll all be there for her."

"And you?"

Maura's nod was devoid of hesitation or indecision. "Anything and everything Jane needs, I want to give her. Always. I know her parents and brothers feel the same way, but I'm a little bit luckier than they are, because Jane's actually willing to ask me."

"That's because you won't use it against me later when trying to tick me off. Tommy and Frankie's blackmail lists are long enough, thanks." Long lanky legs crossed at the knee, causing Jane to shift slightly to face more toward Maura. "You also don't try to get me to help you with plumbing jobs, and you've stopped trying to set me up on blind dates… and you know how to keep a secret. That all adds up to me wanting to talk to you instead of my other family members. Besides, you let me eat chocolate chip pancakes in the shape of turtles when no one is around. How could I turn down turtle shaped chocolate chip pancakes?"

"Tortoise," Maura corrected automatically, causing Dr. Dearborn's eyes to twinkle. Jane had been right about the Pavlovian response.

With another chuckle, Jane finally looked from the medical examiner to her doctor. "Ma makes me bunny pancakes… at work… all the time. It's so embarrassing. For one, I'm not a huge fan of rabbits. For two, I'm at work. People see things. They talk. The next thing you know, there are rabbit… _things_ hidden in my desk drawers." She blushed ever so slightly. "Apparently, there's a sex toy shop down the street from the station that I've never bothered to notice before."

Taking a moment to think about it, Jane's head flew around to glare at Maura. "Speaking of, what did you do with those things anyway? I mean… wait… do I even want to know?"

"I still have them." Maura said it easily and simply, as though that were all there was to it, and she was waiting for another question from the doctor or a continuation of Jane's thoughts. When neither happened, she realized that there was apparently more explaining to do. "They're still in their packaging. Well, except for the one that was of really good quality. Since you didn't want it, I thought you wouldn't mind if I took it. It's in the nightstand on my side of the bed in your room."

More silence. Dr. Dearborn's eyebrows lifted in surprise, with undercurrents of amusement.

"Oh my God," Jane mumbled as her jaw dropped and eyes slightly bugged. "You do... in my... holy crap."

"What? Oh, tch! Jane." Lightly she slapped her best friend's thigh, suddenly laughing at what she thought was the concern. "I don't use it while you're _there._ I wait until you're in the shower! …or I take it in with me while I'm in there. It's waterproof, rechargeable, very cleverly designed. The parts that look like ears each have their own…" Her fingers stopped wiggling, mid-bunny-imitation. Understanding dawned, though when she spoke, it became clear that Maura had understood entirely the wrong thing. "I probably should have asked if you wanted that one, shouldn't I?" she asked, suddenly uneasy. "I'm sorry, Jane. I'll get you another one."

Jane swung her gaze to the psychiatrist, eyes still wide with shock. "I can't even. Just," she turned back to the medical examiner. "Really? Maura... really? Okay, first of all," she stood up, pulling her hand gently from Maura's as she began to pace. Maura, true to habit, pulled her legs up on the sofa to allow Jane to make a path back and forth in front of her. "Do not buy me those kinds of toys. That's just... no," she shook her head. "Just no. Second of all, in my bed when I'm in the shower? Really? I have no idea what to do with that new piece of information. Third of all," she stopped in front of the honey-brunette seeming, for the time being, to completely have forgotten about the other doctor in the room, "when did you get so comfortable in my bed that you could even _do_ that kind of thing when I'm not around. I mean... really? Seriously?" She ran one hand through her hair as she held the other out to gesture at Maura. "I don't know _even_ know," she shook her head again, turned, plopped down on the sofa winding up even closer to Maura than before, and, in an automatic gesture, offered her hand for Maura to once again hold. "Christ."

Dr. Dearborn remained perfectly placid in the face of Jane's upset and Maura's growing bewilderment. As Maura's hand sought comfort in Jane's, the psychiatrist took a sip from her water glass, then suggested, "Actually, those are good questions, Jane, and it sounds like Maura could ease your mind a bit by answering them. Maura?"

Flustered and ill-equipped to quite understand why, Maura nevertheless had promised to do her best for Jane, and do her best she would. "Um. Well? Okay. I won't buy you those toys, although I did take one that was rightfully yours, so I should at least replace it for you if you wanted it. Or I could, I could just give you the money and you could go to the store yourself."

What else was there? Being around an upset Jane tended to jumble Maura's thoughts. She glanced at the doctor's pad, upside down from her perspective, and covered with that pretty, gibberish shorthand, and nodded once to herself. "Since you ask, I've always been comfortable masturbating when you're not around, since that isn't an activity which best friends typically share, according to the Ask forums on Yahoo!. As for the location and timing, honestly, Jane, where else am I going to do it? Would you prefer that I wait for you to get out of the shower? I haven't had more than fifteen minutes alone in the past three and a half months, and as you mentioned yourself when I was preparing for my canceled date, it has been quite some time since I had intercourse. What did you expect? Surely you've also _– Oh_. You… you haven't? Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry." True contrition trespassed Maura's pretty face as her fingers tightened around Jane's. "I didn't realize. Sweetheart, I promise I'll give you some time to yourself. When we leave, why don't I drop you off at home and go get some groceries or something?"

"You looked that question up on Ask Yahoo? Of course you did." Jane sighed, blush full force on her face. "Maura, I don't want your money. If I wanted a toy I'd," she glanced to Dearborn, blushed harder, but continued on, "I don't need to buy a toy, baby girl, and you don't need to leave me alone. Besides, you leaving me alone just so I... no, it'd never work. I'd never be able to... I mean, if you _knew_ that I was doing that right then. I... you... God, Maura. I had to get involved with a doctor who has absolutely no problems talking about sex?" She rolled her eyes, shaking her head and letting her hair slightly cover her face. "I'm just going to crawl underneath the table now."

"Sex is healthy and enjoyable," Maura said, glancing once towards the doctor as if hoping for translation. "I know I have you to cuddle, and I really love that." She stroked a hand along Jane's face, giving Dr. Dearborn something to think about and make notes on. "But we're not involved in a sexual relationship. I just, you know, I didn't want to bring that into your awareness. I'm sorry, Jane, I didn't know it would be a bad thing. I'll… I just… won't. Okay? Will that help?"

"No," Jane leaned into Maura's touch. "No, that's not okay, and it's not a bad thing, Maura. You just... threw me, that's all. Look," she reached up to pull the hand on her face down, holding it between her own, "I'm a big girl. I know that people, even you... _especially_ you," she winked, "have needs, and I don't want to stop you from fulfilling those. I want you to be happy, and, if I can't make you happy because there's something I can't do for you, then I want you to be able to find it somewhere. Just," she scowled in thought for a moment, "bear with me, okay? I'm from an Catholic Italian family. We were taught things would fall off and we'd go to hell for even talking about stuff like that. You know how we are."

Lowering her head to make sure that Maura was looking into her eyes, Jane added softly, "Don't change for me, okay? And don't stop warding off colds. You get cranky when you stop doing that." She smirked, eyes dancing with the little drop of humor she'd just released into the tension of the room.

"I really do," Maura acknowledged, "but so do you, and I want you to have some freedom to do what you need to do, too. Remember, I said I'd do anything you needed, Jane. That includes giving you space when you need it. Or… Wait a minute, Jane." Something Jane had said finally penetrated, and Maura's attention was arrested. "Did you just say you couldn't make me happy? What gave you that impression?"

Dearborn took notes as slowly and unobtrusively as possible, doing a masterful impression of a piece of non-judgmental furniture.

"Well, I mean, you said it yourself. We're not... it's just that we... crap," Jane blew out a long stream of air and tried again. "Maura, we're not having sex, and you need sex. We just went over this. So," the detective mask slid down over angular features, "if we're not having sex and you need that to be fulfilled and happy, then it would stand to reason I am not making you 100 percent happy." Clenching her jaw shut, Jane cleared her throat, fully aware that her eyes were giving away all her insecurities but not sure what to do to keep it all from happening. "I can't believe I just said that out loud," she mumbled to herself as she sat back on the sofa, turning to face the wall across the way.

Dearborn actually opened her mouth to speak, but Maura beat her to the punch. "Sweetie, do you want to be having sex?"

Silence filled the room as Jane sat and stared at the wall, completely flabbergasted. Her arms fell to her sides, hands balling into fists. She slow blinked a few times, breaths becoming more and more shallow as her olive complexion paled. When she finally moved, it was only her head. She slowly turned to Maura, eyes somewhere between shocked and terrified. In a pinched, panicked voice, she managed to squeak out a few nonsense syllables, then tried again for something closer to the English language. What finally managed to tumble out of mouth was simplistic at best, but the only thing she could seem to actually say aloud, "I don't know," she said very slowly, "that I can handle my own answer."

With that, she slowly turned her head to again face the opposing wall as she let the sheer terror she was feeling seep into her facial features.

Helpless hazel eyes darted towards the doctor, though her hands reached again for Jane, both seeking and offering reassurance. "Jane? Sweetheart, we don't have to. I hope you don't feel pressured, because I never want you to feel that way. I'm fine. I am. I can wait." Just for the doctor, she mouthed, _What do I do?_

Dr. Dearborn sat forward, clearing her throat. "Remember your coping strategies, Jane. Think about your ideal outcome, then think about what is and isn't in your control. Breathe, and then speak your truth."

Jane made a little popping sound with her lips as she pulled them in and then released them. "Had about 100 really sarcastic things just run through my head, Doc, but I'm thinking now is not the time." She closed her eyes, idly reaching up to scratch at her eyebrow as she pulled herself back together.

After taking a few internal moments of peace to really gather her thoughts, Jane opened her eyes and gave a heavy sigh. She fidgeted for a moment, running her hands through her hair, looking down at the backs of them, crossing and uncrossing her arms, and then finally settling on standing up and walking away from the sofa to stand just outside the little grouping the sofa, coffee table, and two chairs created.

Running both hands through her hair, she finally began to talk. "I always thought that," she stopped talking and her hands stopped mid-motion, stuck in the thick mass of dark curls. She dropped her hands to her side and tried again, "You know, everyone always says that," again she stopped, shaking her head to herself. She tried again. "Ma would just about," another stop. This time, the tall, lanky woman actually gave a little stomp of her foot before, again, trying, "Maura..." She trailed off.

Wrapping her arms around herself, it was clear that Jane was pulling on some internal reserve. There was a determined look on her face, one the doctor had yet to see but one Maura had seen often when Jane was absolutely certain about a specific fact that was about to solve the case.

The detective walked back, returning to her place on the sofa, sat down with a surprisingly amount of grace, turned to the honey-brunette, and, with intensity in her face, eyes, and voice, quietly answered, "Yes."

Apprehension gave way to a shy, tentative smile. Equally hesitant hands edged their way back towards Jane's. "You do?" Maura asked, just to be sure. "You really do? With me?"

The intensity never left Jane as she answered again, "Yes."

At Jane's response, Maura's breath caught. "Oh, _good_. Because as accomplished as I am at taking care of my own physical urges, that never feels as good to me as when you just lie down beside me to go to sleep. I can only imagine what it'll feel like when you're lying with me for _not_ sleeping… Well, I've _been_imagining, actually, God, you have no idea!"

Dr. Dearborn smiled, in lieu of a distracting chuckle. "So, Jane," she said in a light, conversational tone as the two women made eyes at one another. "I suppose I should have asked you this earlier, but now works, too. Are there any major changes in your life since our last conversation? Did you consider telling Maura how you felt?"

The question shook the detective out of the moment, and she laughed, sitting back against the sofa. "Yes and yes," she replied between chuckles. "I told her, she didn't go screaming for the hills, and then we cuddled up and went to sleep because, you know, work." With a shrug that was practically apologetic, she added, "That's about as far as we got. I think my brain can only handle two major things happening a day. Figuring it out and then telling Maura was my limit last night." She smirked. "Hey, at least I recognize my limits, right?"

The psychiatrist chuckled, but beneath it was a touch of satisfaction. "That's another little triumph. Now, normally when someone is dealing with as much as you are, Jane, I caution against starting a new relationship. But from everything you've both told me, this is nothing new, is it?"

Maura's brows rose in acknowledgment of the therapist's insight. It wasn't often that someone made an assessment, the way she did, rather than guessing and getting lucky.

Dr. Dearborn said without the slightest hint of apology, "I had always intended to bring in one of your family members, Jane. I just had to know which one represented the primary relationship in your life. I knew before our last session; that didn't influence me to choose Maura as the person to bring in." She tapped her pen against her chin for a moment, then asked, "How did you feel after you left my office last time, in terms of your need or desire for a drink? The usual scale, one to ten."

"Does eleven count?" Jane gave Maura a weary look. "The movie and pizza were better, though."

"Hm. How about when you clarified your feelings for Maura?" asked the doctor, making a little note. Maura gave Jane a gentle pull closer to herself, letting the taller woman lean on her a tad.

"Still pretty up there. I mean, not like an eleven. More like a nine...ish." Again she glanced at Maura. "But the cuddleage was better."

"And this morning when you woke up?" Dr. Dearborn asked the questions, but Maura's expression indicated not just interest, but active involvement in the answer. Moreover, her features did not carry the impression that she was mentally running through a blur of facts, figures, or historical notations. She was not being a doctor or scientist: she was involved personally.

"I didn't think about taking a shot at all, but," she glanced between the two doctors, "I was sort of distracted this morning." She gave Maura an apologetic look. "Ma didn't buy that frilly little black and white 1950's looking apron for me. I bought it because I though you'd look really... good in it, and I was right, you do." She had the good grace to blush at that small admittance.

"Jane," Maura replied in chastisement, though a certain twinkle in her eye advertised that she didn't take it all that seriously. "Did you really buy something just because you thought I'd look pretty in it, or was that just your way of saying you wanted me to get back in the kitchen and make you a pie?"

"Yes," the detective answered, grinning sheepishly.

Dr. Dearborn permitted herself a smile, albeit a small one. Maura's was much brighter, but then, so were her cheeks. "And right now?"

"I'm not going to lie, Doctor George," Jane gave a small smile at the nickname, "it's still there. I still want one. Even now, it's about a five or six, but I want other things more."

The cinnamon-skinned woman made a note, then set aside her legal pad and pen. "Tell me," she suggested. "Tell me one thing that you want. Something that depends entirely on you, not on your mother, not on Maura, not on anyone else. Something you, personally, could make happen. Something that would be worth passing up a drink no matter how strong the temptation."

Without hesitation, Jane responded, "I want to be a better person."

Dearborn rose from her chair, signaling the formal close of the session. "I do believe you are well on your way there, Jane."


	19. Chapter 19

"Maura, can we just go home? I don't care which home just, you know, some place where we can lay in bed and not be bothered. I'm pretty drained, and I'm not really that hungry." Jane slouched in the passenger's side of the Prius. "I really hate that your place isn't like it used to be, a sanctuary away from my crazy family. I know you need to go back to your place. I'm sure you want to get clothes and soak in a real sized tub and whatever else it is you do in the bathroom. I guess I could deal with Ma for a night or so. I mean, what are the odds that she'll come walking in on us?" She held a hand up. "Don't answer that."

As she put the car in gear and backed out of the lot, Maura chuckled. "Actually, your mother has learned not to walk into my bedroom ever, for any reason. She learned that the first time she tried to do my laundry to say thanks for letting her stay there."

"Don't tell me; I don't want to know." Jane held a hand up to stop any possibility of hearing the rest of that story. "So we go to your place, make a break for your bedroom, and shut ourselves in for the rest of the night. Sound good to you?"

Casual for a moment, Maura smiled over at Jane, but something in Jane's expression turned the driver suddenly blank-faced, to an even greater degree than when Giovanni the face-licker had offered the two of them a threesome a few months ago. "Yes?" She used the stop sign to take a closer look without causing an accident. "Yes. God, yes." The car remained stationary until a honk from behind them drew her attention back to the here-and-now. From there on out, Maura drove as fast as the speed limit and common sense would allow.

* * *

><p>Showered, refreshed, and in a black satin robe she was pretty sure Maura had never seen on her, Jane stepped out of the master bathroom and headed for the bed to wait for Maura to come out of her giant walk-in closet. "You know, it's not like we're going to a five star restaurant, baby girl. It's okay if you're not wearing shoes." She chuckled as she sat down on the bed, admiring the lovely job Maura had done of rolling back the sheets.<p>

"I'm not wearing shoes," Maura said, her voice muffled by the walls covered in garments as she faced the interior of the closet. "I'm trying to decide. I… You'll probably think I'm silly, but I just want you to know that I think you're worth taking a little extra effort to impress."

Jane smiled. Maura did always look so good, so put together. As she thought about it, though, the detective realized that wasn't true. The more she thought about it, the more it bothered her as a memory came popping back into her head. "Hey, Maura, remember a little while ago when I walked into your office while you were trying to put eye drops in your eyes? I think I came down to get the Bowen file. Anyway, you... you didn't seem so... I've seen you look better than that day. By your standards, you were a little sloppy."

Maura was quiet for a moment, not even rustling around in the closet. "That wasn't the first time I hadn't dressed well. It was just the first time you noticed. I'd been behaving passively-aggressively through fashion. You hadn't made fun of how put-together I was for over a month, and that was how I became certain something was wrong. It just took me that additional time to figure out exactly what it was. I initially thought you were angry with me over something I'd done. So I thought, well, if she doesn't care how I look, who else matters? I work with dead people, and a bunch of people who aren't Jane."

Her voice had gone very soft, and then she fell silent again for a moment as rustling began. It didn't take long this time, however; no flipping of hangers back and forth, just a little shush-shush of silk, and then the caramel-haired woman emerged from the closet in a gown of silver-green like sage, loose enough to avoid trashiness despite the cling, the shimmer, and the low neckline. Her soft smile was back. "But you notice now, don't you?" she asked.

But then Maura caught a look at what Jane was wearing, and it rendered her inarticulate. "Sweet… Holy… You look… _Jane…_ I can't even…"

Jane raised an eyebrow, smirking despite herself. "It's a black robe, baby girl. It's not like I'm naked." A certain amount of bemusement in her voice, she asked, "You going to be okay?"

"I really hope so," Maura replied with feeling as she remembered to walk over to her side of the bed, turning off the lights on the way there. All that remained were the lit lamps on each nightstand, letting her see a clear path unobstructed by tortoise or dog. She sat down, turned to face Jane, and paused. "This feels different."

"Yes." Jane stood and untied the robe, letting it fall from her shoulders to the ground to reveal a matching black satin, spaghetti strap nightshirt and sleep shorts. "Did you think it wouldn't? I mean, I know I'm a little slow sometimes, but even I knew that it's got to feel different after admitting to everything we did over the past couple of days, right?" She slipped back into bed, expecting a long, drawn out response. Instead, there was silence. "Right, Maura?" She looked over to the doctor, who was simply staring at her. "Maura? Hey, baby girl? Hello?"

"Hi," said Maura from beneath the covers, where she'd slipped while Jane had done the same on her own side of the bed. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are to me?"

A blush crept across Jane's face as she gave a bashful smile to the other woman. "I hope," she said as she leaned toward the doctor, "half as beautiful as you are to me." She reached forward, running a hand through Maura's hair and along her chin, fingers stopping just below the doctor's lips. "Because you're breathtaking to me."

Maura's eyes hooded, smoldering as she took a moment just to feel that touch. She turned into Jane's hand, lips pushing out to bestow a half-kiss to her fingertips. "Very different," whispered the petite woman as she nudged herself closer, drew Jane nearer to herself with a hand running up that long spine.

Jane leaned closer, following the directions from Maura's touch. "Yes," she said as she settled against the other woman, bodies pressed together, front to front. Without another word, she leaned forward and laid the barest of kisses against Maura's lips. "Fair warning," she whispered as she pulled back, "I'm a screamer, and I know Ma's in the kitchen." She waggled an eyebrow suggestively, smirking.

"You are?" Maura asked rhetorically, eyes widening, utterly captivated. "Oh, I have _got_ to make that happen so I can hear it for myself. It's a good thing I've been practicing."

An actual giggle escaped Jane's lips as she leaned in for another kiss. "Can't wait."

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><p><strong>Thank you for reading. We appreciate your reviews.<br>**

**From Googlemouth: I'd like to mention that a great deal of Dr. Georgia Dearborn's dialogue was based heavily on (and in some cases quoted directly from) Dr. Calla Dearborn, a character in Katherine V. Forrest's **_**Apparition Alley,**_** a lesbian murder mystery featuring Detective Kate Delafield. As I am not a psychiatrist, nor have I been psychoanalyzed, I did not have personal experience on which to draw. However, because many of Jane's issues are also issues that Kate Delafield shares (unbeknownst to AdmHawthorne, who I don't think has read this series of books), as well as certain commonalities of personality and mindset, I thought that this fictional doctor's approach to the issues might be suitable to adapt to Jane's needs. No copyright infringement is intended; I consider this an homage to a better writer, rather than an attempt to profit from her work in money or reputation without giving her due credit.**


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